the most masochistic tourist from coming within a hundred miles of the place. Still, the heart and soul of the book is the author's desire to lovingly and humorously portray these people in all their flawed human glory. The people are without exception rascals, but the underlying attitude of the author is grudging acceptance of them and all the eccentricities which appear to drive him to distraction.
The arrival of the author in the town shows that it is starved for tourists, as evidenced by the "horde of hotel porters" (11) who converge on him for his business. His work is not meant to portray the people as suffering saints, but as fully-drawn human beings full of quirks and flaws. This humanistic portrayal is the source of the book's humor. He writes, for example, that a "gang of coachmen . . . all but tore me to pieces" (11). The "tram" is "a sort of tumbledown hut with shattered panes and standing somewhat askew" (12). It
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