Book Description

When one first contemplates a voyage of many thousand miles, attended with long absence, loss of old associates, together with all the charms of home, country, and friends, often too lightly estimated whilst possessed, but always sorely missed when no longer within call; one is yet, and this through no lack of sensibility, apt to regard the sacrifice about to be made to duty as sufficiently light, and, with the aid of manhood and a little philosophy, easy of endurance. The very task, which a resolution of this grave nature necessarily imposes, of making as little of the matter as possible to those dear ones who yield up their fears, and subdue their strong affections, in obedience to your judgment, serves for a time the double purpose of hoodwinking oneself as well as blinding those on whom we seek to practise this kind imposition. Next comes the bustle of getting ready, assisted and cheered by the redoubled attentions of all who love, or feel an interest in one's fortunes. Amidst the excitement, then, of these various feelings, the deep-seated throb of natural apprehension, or home regret, if even felt, struggling for expression, is checked or smothered in the loud note of preparation. The day of departure is fixed at length, it is true; but then it is not yet come: even when contemplating its near approach, one feels wondrous firm and most stoically resolved: at last, however, come it does; and now our chief friend Philosophy, like many other friends, is found most weak when most needed. In vain do we invoke his approved maxims, hitherto so glibly dealt out to silence all gainsayers; yet now, they are either found inapt or are forgotten wholly, until, after a paltry show of defence, braggart Philosophy fairly takes to his heels, and leaves us abandoned to the will of old mother Nature. Now, indeed, arrives the tug; and I, for my part, pity the man who, however savagely resolute, does not feel and own her power. The adieus of those one loves are, at best,—that is, for the shortest absence,—sufficiently unpleasant; but when there lie years, and, to the eye of affection, dangers, in the way of the next meeting, as the old Scotch ballad has it, "O but it is sair to part!" I should, I confess, were I free to choose, prefer the ignominy of cowardly flight, to the greatest triumph firmness ever yet achieved, and be constrained to hear and respond to that last long "good-b'ye!" As I honestly own that, for various good reasons, I set out with the intention of keeping such a close record of my feelings and doings as my errant habits might permit, with the premeditated design also of giving them to that public which from the beginning had decided that I should do so, I concluded there was nothing like an early start; and finding these thoughts preface, or rather commence, my journal, so do I give them like precedence here.