The Literary Remains of Thomas Bragdon - Page 2

matter, this plan was Bragdon's own, and its
first suggestion by him was received by me with a smile of derision; but
the quaintness of the idea in time won me over, and after the first trial,
when we made a spirit trip to Beloochistan, I was so fascinated by my
experience that I eagerly looked forward to a second in the series, and
was always thereafter only too glad to bear my share of the trouble and
expense of our annual journeyings. In this manner we had practically
circumnavigated this world and one or two of the planets; for, content as
we were to visit unseen countries in spirit only, we were never hampered
by the ordinary limitations of travel, and where books failed to supply us
with information the imagination was called into play. The universe was
open to us at the expense of a captain for our sharpie, canned provisions
for a week, and a moderate consumption of gray matter in the conjuring up
of scenes with which neither ourselves nor others were familiar. The trips
were refreshing always, and in the case of our spirit journey through
Italy, which at that time neither of us had visited, but which I have
since had the good-fortune to see in the fulness of her beauty, I found it
to be far more delightful than the reality.

"We'll go in," said Bragdon, when he proposed the Italian tour, "by the
St. Gothard route, the description of which I will prepare in detail
myself. You can take the lakes, rounding up with Como. I will follow with
the trip from Como to Milan, and Milan shall be my care. You can do Verona
and Padua; I Venice. Then we can both try our hands at Rome and Naples; in
the latter place, to save time, I will take Pompeii, you Capri. Thence we
can hark back to Rome, thence to Pisa, Genoa, and Turin, giving a day to
Siena and some of the quaint Etruscan towns, passing out by the Mont Cenis
route from Turin to Geneva. If you choose you can take a run along the
Riviera and visit Monte Carlo. For my own part, though, I'd prefer not to
do that, because it brings a sensational element into the trip which I
don't particularly care for. You'd have to gamble, and if your imagination
is to have full play you ought to lose all your money, contemplate
suicide, and all that. I don't think the results would be worth the mental
strain you'd have to go through, and I certainly should not enjoy hearing
about it. The rest of the trip, though, we can do easily in five days,
which will leave us two for fishing, if we feel so disposed. They say the
blue-fish are biting like the devil this year."

I regret now that we did not include a stenographer among the necessaries
of our spirit trips, for, as I look back upon that Italian tour, it was
well worthy of preservation in book form, particularly