O magnet-South! O glistening, perfumed South!
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil!
O all dear to me!
AMERICAN ADVENTURES
CHAPTER I
ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES
On journeys through the States we start,
... We willing learners of all, teachers of all, lovers of all.
We dwell a while in every city and town ...
—Walt Whitman.
Had my companion and I never crossed the continent together, had we never gone "abroad at home," I might have curbed my impatience at the beginning of our second voyage. But from the time we returned from our first journey, after having spent some months in trying, as some one put it, to "discover America," I felt the gnawings of excited appetite. The vast sweep of the country continually suggested to me some great delectable repast: a banquet spread for a hundred million guests; and having discovered myself unable, in the time first allotted, to devour more than part of it—a strip across the table, as it were, stretching from New York on one side to San Francisco on the other—I have hungered impatiently for more. Indeed, to be quite honest, I should like to try to eat it all.