CHAPTER V
A TRAVELER AT NINETEEN
It was not as a poet, however, that Bayard Taylor was to win his first fame. At the age of nineteen, when he had but half completed his four years' term of apprenticeship, he made up his mind to go to Europe. He had no money; but that did not appear to him an insurmountable obstacle. He thought he could work his way by writing letters for the newspapers. So he went up to Philadelphia and visited all the editors. For three days he went about; but all in vain. The editors gave him little encouragement. He was on the point of going home, but with no thought of giving up his project.
At last two different editors offered him each fifty dollars in advance for twelve letters, and the proprietor of Graham's Magazine paid him forty dollars for some poems. So he went back to Kennett Square the jubilant possessor of a hundred and forty dollars.
He succeeded in buying his release from the articles of apprenticeship, and immediately prepared to set out on foot for New York, where he and two others were to take ship for England. That was the beginning of a career of travel which lasted many years, and brought him both fame and money.
In a delightful essay on "The First Journey I Ever Made," he says that while other great travelers have felt in childhood an inborn propensity to go out into the world to see the regions beyond, he had the intensest desire to climb upward—so that without shifting his horizon, he could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of vision. "I envied every bird," he goes on, "that sat singing on the topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weathercock on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and to rise from the earth in a balloon was a bliss which I would almost have given my life to enjoy." His desire to ascend soon took the practical form of wishing to climb a mountain. By great economy he saved up fifteen dollars, and with a companion who had twenty-seven dollars (enormous wealth!) he set out for a walking tour to the Catskills, with the hope of going even so far as the Connecticut valley.
No doubt the feelings he experienced in setting out on that excursion, at the end of his first year as an apprentice, would apply equally well to the greater journey he was to attempt a year later.
"The steamboat from Philadelphia deposited me at Bordentown, on the forenoon of a warm, clear day. I buckled on my knapsack, inquired the road to Amboy, and struck off, resolutely, with the feelings of an explorer on the threshold of great discoveries. The sun shone brightly, the woods were green, and the meadows were gay with phlox and buttercups. Walking was the natural impulse of the muscles; and the glorious visions which the next few days would unfold to me, drew me onward with a powerful fascination. Thus, mile after mile went by; and early in the afternoon I reached Hightstown, very hot and hungry, and a little footsore. Twenty-five cents only had been expended thus far—and was I now to dine for half a dollar? The thought was banished as rapidly as it came, and six cakes, of remarkable toughness and heaviness, put an effectual stop to any further promptings of appetite that day.
"The miles now became longer, and the rosy color of my anticipations faded a little. The sandy level of the country fatigued my eyes; the only novel objects I had yet discovered were the sweep-poles of the wells….The hot afternoon was drawing to a close, and I was wearily looking out for Spotswood, when a little incident occurred, the memory of which has ever since been as refreshing to me as the act in itself was at the time.
"I stopped to get a drink from a well in front of a neat little farmhouse. While I was awkwardly preparing to let down the bucket, a kind, sweet voice suddenly said: 'Let me do it for you.' I looked up, and saw before me a girl of sixteen, with blue eyes, wavy auburn hair, and slender form—not strikingly handsome, but with a shy, pretty face, which blushed the least bit in the world, as she met my gaze.
"Without waiting for my answer, she seized the pole and soon drew up the dripping bucket, which she placed upon the curb. 'I will get you a glass,' she then said, and darted into the house—reappearing presently with a tumbler in one hand and a plate of crisp tea-cakes in the other. She stood beside me while I drank, and then extended the plate with a gesture more inviting than any words would have been. I had had enough of cake for one day; but I took one, nevertheless, and put a second in my pocket, at her kind persuasion.
"This was the first of many kindnesses which I have experienced from strangers all over the wide world; and there are few, if any, which I shall remember longer.
"At sunset I had walked about twenty-two miles, and had taken to the railroad track by way of change, when I came upon a freight train, which had stopped on account of some slight accident.
"'Where are you going?' inquired the engineer.
"'To Amboy.'
"'Take you there for a quarter!'
"It was too tempting; so I climbed upon the tender and rested my weary legs, while the pines and drifted sands flew by us an hour or more— and I had crossed New Jersey!"
This little description may be taken as a type of the way in which he traveled and the way in which he described his travels—a way that almost immediately made him famous, and caused the public to call for volume after volume from his pen.