How To Travel

First, as to manner. You may travel on foot, on horseback, in a carriage with horses, in a carriage with steam, or in a steamboat or ship, and also in many other ways.

Of these, so far as mere outside circumstance goes, it is probable that the travelling with horses in a canal-boat is the pleasantest of all, granting that there is no crowd of passengers, and that the weather is agreeable. But there are so few parts of the world where this is now practicable, that we need not say much of it. The school-girls of this generation may well long for those old halcyon days of Miss Portia Lesley's School. In that ideal establishment the girls went to Washington to study political economy in the winter. They went to Saratoga in July and August to study the analytical processes of chemistry. There was also a course there on the history of the Revolution. They went to Newport alternate years in the same months, to study the Norse literature and swimming. They went to the White Sulphur Springs and to Bath, to study the history of chivalry as illustrated in the annual tournaments. They went to Paris to study French, to Rome to study Latin, to Athens to study Greek. In all parts of the world where they could travel by canals they did so. While on the journeys they studied their arithmetic and other useful matters, which had been passed by at the capitals. And while they were on the canals they washed and ironed their clothes, so as to be ready for the next stopping-place. You can do anything you choose on a canal.

Next to canal travelling, a journey on horseback is the pleasantest. It is feasible for girls as well as boys, if they have proper escort and superintendence. You see the country; you know every leaf and twig; you are tired enough, and not too tired, when the day is done. When you are at the end of each day's journey you find you have, all the way along, been laying up a store of pleasant memories. You have a good appetite for supper, and you sleep in one nap for the nine hours between nine at night and six in the morning.

You might try this, Phillis,--you and Robert. I do not think your little pony would do, but your uncle will lend you Throg for a fortnight. There is nothing your uncle will not do for you, if you ask him the right way. When Robert's next vacation comes, after he has been at home a week, he will be glad enough to start. You had better go now and see your Aunt Fanny about it. She is always up to anything. She and your Uncle John will be only too glad of the excuse to do this thing again. They have not done it since they and I and P. came down through the Dixville Notch all four on a hand gallop, with the rain running in sheets off our waterproofs. Get them to say they will go, and then hold them up to it.

For dress, you, Phillis, will want a regular bloomer to use when you are scrambling over the mountains on foot. Indeed, on the White Mountains now, the ladies best equipped ride up those