An Inland Voyage

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson




Contents:
   Preface
   Antwerp to Boom
   On the Willebroek Canal
   The Royal Sport Nautique
   At Maubeuge
   On the Sambre Canalised:  to Quartes
   Pont-sur-Sambre:
      We are Pedlars
      The Travelling Merchant
   On the Sambre Canalised:  to Landrecies
   At Landrecies
   Sambre and Oise Canal:  Canal boats
   The Oise in Flood
   Origny Sainte-Benoite
      A By-day
      The Company at Table
   Down the Oise:  to Moy
   La Fere of Cursed Memory
   Down the Oise:  Through the Golden Valley
   Noyon Cathedral
   Down the Oise:  to Compiegne
   At Compiegne
   Changed Times
   Down the Oise:  Church interiors
   Precy and the Marionnettes
   Back to the world



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION



To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to
sin against proportion.  But a preface is more than an author can
resist, for it is the reward of his labours.  When the foundation
stone is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for
an hour before the public eye.  So with the writer in his preface:
he may have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a
moment in the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanour.

It is best, in such circumstances, to represent a delicate shade of
manner between humility and superiority:  as if the book had been
written by some one else, and you had merely run over it and
inserted what was good.  But for my part I have not yet learned the
trick to that perfection; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth
of my sentiments towards a reader; and if I meet him on the
threshold, it is to invite him in with country cordiality.

To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little book in
proof, than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension.

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