iv 



PREFATORY. 



ican in England is just enough at home to enable him 

 to discriminate subtle shades and differences at first 

 sight which might escape a traveller of another and 

 antagonistic race. He has brought with him, but lit- 

 tle modified or impaired, his whole inheritance of Eng- 

 lish ideas and predilections, and much of what he sees 

 affects him like a memory. It is his own past, his ante- 

 natal life, and his long buried ancestors look through 

 his eyes and perceive with his sense. 



I have attempted only the surface, and to express 

 my own first day's uncloyed and unalloyed satisfaction. 

 Of course I have run these things through my own mill 

 and given them my own coloring (as who would not), 

 and if other travellers do not find what I did, it is no 

 fault of mine ; or if the "Britishers " do not deserve all 

 the pleasant things I say of them, why then so much 

 the worse for them. 



In fact, if it shall appear that I have treated this 

 part in the same spirit that I have the themes in the 

 other chapters, reporting only such things as impressed 

 me and stuck to me and tasted good, I shall be satis- 

 fied. 



Esopus-on-Hudson, November, 1875. 



