CHAPTER LI 



EARLIER EXCURSIONS IN THE UNITED STATES -1838-1875 



FROM my boyhood I have been fond of travel, and 

 at times this fondness has been of great use to me. 

 My constitution, though never robust, has thus far proved 

 elastic, and whenever I have at last felt decidedly the 

 worse for overwork or care, the best of all medicines 

 has been an excursion, longer or shorter, in our own 

 country or in some other. Thus it has happened that, 

 besides journeys into nearly every part of the United 

 States, and official residences in Russia, France, Ger 

 many, and the West Indies, I have made frequent visits 

 to Europe among them ten or twelve to Italy, and even 

 more to Germany, France, and England, besides excur 

 sions into the Scandinavian countries, Egypt, Greece, and 

 Turkey. To most of these I have alluded in other chap 

 ters; but there are a few remaining possibly worthy of 

 note. 



The first of these journeys was taken when I went with 

 my father and mother from the little country town where 

 we then lived to Syracuse, Buffalo, and Niagara. This 

 must have been in 1838, when I was about six years of 

 age. Every step of it interested me keenly. Like the 

 shop-girl in lilmile Souvestre s story, who journeyed 

 from Paris to St. Cloud, I was &quot;amazed to find the world 

 so large.&quot; Syracuse, which now has about one hundred 

 and twenty thousand inhabitants, had then, perhaps, five 

 thousand; the railways which were afterward consoli 

 dated into the New York Central were not yet built, and 



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