'<-». jiJretace. 



pref( 





^HIS book was not written to fill a long-felt want. 

 Neither was it at the " urgent solicitations of my 

 friends," many of whom do not know that I made the 

 journey herein described. Nor was it written to make money, 

 but rather with a reverse expectation. I wrote it partly at 

 the request of my immediate family, partly with the hope that 

 it would interest my friends as well as a portion of the outside 

 public, partly to experience the sensations of authorship. 



The title of the work is capable of two constructions — a 

 pedestrian journey, and the nomadic life I led for a time in 

 the likeness of the Ishmaelites which infest our rural districts, 

 with the exception in respect to the last part — and a blessed 

 exception it is — that while an Eastern tramp hunts work, 

 praying he wont find it, his Occidental brother did the con- 

 trary. As to the first rendering, it might be open to criti- 

 cism, inasmuch as two-thirds of the overland journey was by 

 rail and water; but I can plead Mark Twain in his " Tramp 

 Abroad " as an extenuating example ; his walking being 

 done on cars and steamboats. But as he was guilty of the 

 hypocrisy of carrying a staff and knapsack, and I did my steam 

 pilgrimage without these deceptions, I think I leave Mark far 

 in the rear in respect to disingenuousness. 



The past winter I conceived the idea of placing my writings 

 in a more durable shape than that derived from scrap-books 



