How To Do It by Edward Everett Hale

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.