"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.