ica.... "A trip," as it is now called, to Europe or America, is one
of the commonest of experiences, involving, apparently, so little
danger, difficulty, or delay, that the feelings with which I made my
first voyage across the Atlantic must seem almost incomprehensible to
the pleasure-seeking or business-absorbed crowds who throng the great
watery highway between the two continents.

But when I first went to America, steam had not shortened the passage of
that formidable barrier between world and world. A month, and not a
week, was the shortest and most favorable voyage that could be looked
for. Few men, and hardly any women, undertook it as a mere matter of
pleasure or curiosity; and though affairs of importance, of course, drew
people from one shore to the other, and the stream of emigration had
already set steadily westward, American and European tourists had not
begun to cross each other by thousands on the high seas in search of
health or amusement.

I was leaving my mother, my brothers and sister, my friends and my
country, for two years, and could only hear from them at monthly
intervals. I was going to work very hard, in a distasteful vocation,
among strangers, from whom I had no right to expect the invariable
kindness and indulgence my own people had favored me with. My spirits
were depressed by my father's troubled fortunes, and I had just received
the first sharp, smarting strokes in the battle of life; those gashes
from which poor "unbruised youth," in its infinite self-compassion,
fancies its very life-blood must all pour away; little imagining under
what gangrened, festering wounds brave life will still hold on its way,
and urge to the hopeless end its warfare with unconquerable sorrow.
There is nothing more pathetic than the terrified impatience of youth
under its first experience of grief, and its vehement appeal of "Behold,
and see if any sorrow be like unto my sorrow!" to the patient adepts in
suffering such as it has not yet begun to conceive of. Orlando's
adjuration to the exiled duke in "As You Like It," and the wise Prince's
reply, seem to me one of the most exquisite illustrations of the
comparative griefs of youth and age.

OFF SANDY HOOK, Monday, September 5.
MY DEAREST H----,

We are within three hours' sail of New York, having greeted the
first corner of Long Island (the first land we saw) yesterday
morning; but we are becalmed, and the