Chapter 31

WITH HIS PROSY OLD GUIDE-BOOK, HE TAKES A PROSY STROLL THROUGH THE
TOWN

When I left home, I took the green morocco guide-book along, supposing
that from the great number of ships going to Liverpool, I would most
probably ship on board of one of them, as the event itself proved.

Great was my boyish delight at the prospect of visiting a place, the
infallible clew to all whose intricacies I held in my hand.

On the passage out I studied its pages a good deal. In the first place,
I grounded myself thoroughly in the history and antiquities of the town,
as set forth in the chapter I intended to quote. Then I mastered the
columns of statistics, touching the advance of population; and pored
over them, as I used to do over my multiplication-table. For I was
determined to make the whole subject my own; and not be content with a
mere smattering of the thing, as is too much the custom with most
students of guide-books. Then I perused one by one the elaborate
descriptions of public edifices, and scrupulously compared the text with
the corresponding engraving, to see whether they corroborated each
other. For be it known that, including the map, there were no less than
seventeen plates in the work. And by often examining them, I had so
impressed every column and cornice in my mind, that I had no doubt of
recognizing the originals in a moment.

In short, when I considered that my own father had used this very
guide-book, and that thereby it had been thoroughly tested, and its
fidelity proved beyond a peradventure; I could not but think that I was
building myself up in an unerring knowledge of Liverpool; especially as
I had familiarized myself with the map, and could turn sharp corners on
it, with marvelous confidence and celerity.

In imagination, as I lay in my berth on ship-board, I used to take
pleasant afternoon rambles through the town; down St. James-street and
up Great George's, stopping at various places of interest and
attraction. I began to think I had been born in Liverpool, so familiar
seemed all the features of the map. And though some of the streets there
depicted were thickly involved, endlessly angular and crooked, like the
map of Boston, in Massachusetts, yet, I made no doubt, that I could
march through them in the darkest night, and even run for the most
distant dock upon a pressing emergency.

Dear delusion!

It never occurred to my boyish thoughts, that though a guide-book, fifty
years old, might have done good service in its day, yet it would prove
but a miserable cicerone to a modern. I little imagined that the
Liverpool my father saw, was another Liverpool from that to which I, his
son Wellingborough was sailing. No; these things never obtruded; so
accustomed