A Walk from London to John OGroats | Page 2

neighbors. We had formed
an Agricultural Club, and met weekly for several winters to compare
notes, exchange opinions' and discuss matters connected with the
occupation. They had honored me with the post of Corresponding
Secretary from the beginning. We held a meeting the evening before I
left for England, when they not only refused to accept my resignation
as Secretary, but made me promise to write them letters about farming
in the Mother Country, and on other matters of interest that I might
meet with on my travels there. My first idea was to do this literally;--to
make a walk through the best agricultural sections of England, and
write home a series of communications to be inserted in our little
village paper. But, on second thought, on considering the size of the
sheet, I found it would require four or five years to print in it all I was
likely to write, at the rate of two columns a week. So I concluded that
the easiest and quickest way would be to make a book of my Notes by
the Way, and to send back to my old friends and neighbors in that form
all the observations and incidents I might make and meet on my walk.
The next thought that suggested itself was this,--that a good many
persons in Great Britain might feel some interest in seeing what an
American, who had resided so long in this country, might have to say
of its sceneries, industries, social life, etc. Still, in writing out these
Notes, although two distinct circles of readers--the English and
American--have been present to my mind, I felt constrained to face and
address the latter, just as if speaking to them alone. I have, moreover,
adopted the free and easy style of epistolary composition, endeavoring
to make each chapter as much like one of the letters I promised my
friends and neighbors at home as practicable. In doing this, the "I" has,
perhaps, talked far too much to beseem those proprieties which the
author of a book should observe. Besides, expressions, figures and
orthography more American than English may be noticed, which will
indicate the circle of readers which the writer had primarily in view.
Still, he would fain believe that these features of the volume will not
seriously affect the interest it might otherwise possess in the minds of
those disposed to give it a reading in this country. Whatever exceptions
they may take to the style and diction, I hope they will find none to the
spirit of the work. ELIHU BURRITT.

London, April 5th, 1864.
CHAPTER I.

MOTIVES TO THE WALK--THE IRON HORSE AND HIS
RIDER--THE LOSSES AND GAINS BY SPEED--THE RAILWAY
TRACK AND TURNPIKE ROAD: THEIR SCENERIES
COMPARED.
One of my motives for making this tour was to look at the country
towns and villages on the way in the face and eyes; to enter them by the
front door, and to see them as they were made to be seen first, as far as
man's mind and hand intended and wrought. Railway travelling, as yet,
takes everything at a disadvantage; it does not front on nature, or art, or
the common conditions and industries of men in town or country. If it
does not actually of itself turn, it presents everything the wrong side
outward. In cities, it reveals the ragged and smutty companionship of
tumble-down out-houses, and mysteries of cellar and back-kitchen life
which were never intended for other eyes than those that grope in them
by day or night. How unnatural, and, more, almost profane and
inhuman, is the fiery locomotion of the Iron Horse through these
densely-peopled towns! now the screech, the roar, and the darkness of
cavernous passages under paved streets, church vaults, and an acre or
two of three- story brick houses, with the feeling of a world of
breathing, bustling humanity incumbent upon you;--now the dash and
flash out into the light, and the higgledy-piggledy glimpses of the next
five minutes. In a moment you are above thickly-thronged streets, and
the houses on either side, looking down into the black throats of smoky
chimneys; into the garret lairs of poverty, sickness, and sin; down
lower upon squads of children trying to play in back-yards eight feet
square. It is all wrong, except in the single quality of speed. You enter
the town as you would a farmer's house, if you first passed through the
pig-stye into the kitchen. Every respectable house in the city turns its
back upon you; and often a very brick and dirty back too, though it may
show an elegant front of Bath or Portland stone to the street it faces. All
the respectable streets run over or under you with an audible shudder of

disgust or dread. None but a shabby