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Traveling in Europe

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 26, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 25.

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Traveling in Europe.

By The N. Y. Christian Advocate

GOING to Europe has become a kind of epidemic. In certain circles it rules despotically. Some years have elapsed since it begun to be said that "the rich should go to Europe to spend, and the poor to save, money." Since then a marked change has taken place in the expenses of living abroad; but it is true still that a person can live for $2,000 per annum in Europe more comfortably than in this country for twice the amount. Those who have a fixed but small income can therefore save money by residing in Europe. The difference between this country and Europe in the expensiveness of travel is as great on the same general scale as in the cost of residence. While it is easy for a gentleman and his wife to spend $8 each per day in travel, it is easier for them to be comfortable, unless they have the vanity of wishing to be thought rich, on two-thirds of that sum; and a single man may travel, and so live that none can be sure that he is not wealthy, on $1,300 a year. Ministers and students now go abroad in greater numbers than ever before, while families that have accumulated property think it necessary to go as soon as possible, often that they may be able to say, "We have been to Europe." Is it a good and wise thing for the successful who begin to feel that they are weary, and that life is hastening away, to go abroad? Sometimes it is; often it is not. If the heads of the family have discretion and firmness enough to maintain Christian principles, habits, and conduct, it is a judicious and beneficent thing for them to go abroad and take those of their children whose business or scholastic pursuits will not be injured by it. If not, nothing is more injurious to the manners, habits, and religious principles of a family than a tour abroad. The number of families lost to the church of Christ by such a tour is not small in every denomination of Christians that attaches any importance to a positive religious experience, or to growth in grace.
—The N. Y. Christian Advocate.