Round the World

Produced by Paul Wenker, Kurt Hockenbury
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
It seems almost unnecessary to say that Round the World, like An American Four-in-Hand in Britain, was originally printed for private circulation. My publishers having asked permission to give it to the public, I have been induced to undertake the slight revision, and to make some additions necessary to fit the original for general circulation, not so much by the favorable reception accorded to the Four-in-Hand in England as well as in America, nor even by the flattering words of the critics who have dealt so kindly with it, but chiefly because of many valued letters which entire strangers have been so extremely good as to take the trouble to write to me, and which indeed are still coming almost daily. Some of these are from invalids who thank me for making the days during which they read the book pass more brightly than before. Can any knowledge be sweeter to one than this? These letters are precious to me, and it is their writers who are mainly responsible for this second volume, especially since some who have thus written have asked where it could be obtained and I have no copies to send to them, which it would have given me a rare pleasure to be able to do.
I hope they will like it as they did the other. Some friends consider it better; others prefer the Four-in-Hand. I think them different. While coaching I was more joyously happy; during the journey round the World I was gaining more knowledge; but if my readers like me half as well in the latter as in the former mood, I shall have only too much cause to subscribe myself with sincere thanks,
Most gratefully,
Think on thy friends when thou haply see'st Some rare, noteworthy object in thy travels, Wish them partakers of thy happiness.
NEW YORK, Saturday, October 12, 1878.
Bang! click! the desk closes, the key turns, and good-bye for a year to my wards—that goodly cluster over which I have watched with parental solicitude for many a day; their several cribs full of records and labelled Union Iron Mills, Lucy Furnaces, Keystone Bridge Works, Union Forge, Cokevale Works, and last, but not least, that infant Hercules, the Edgar Thomson Steel Rail Works—good lusty bairns all, and well calculated to survive in The struggle for existence—great things are expected of them in The future, but for the present I bid them farewell; I'm off for a holiday, and the rise and fall of iron and steel affecteth me not.