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  Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation

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  American Notes for General Circulation

  by Charles Dickens

  October, 1996 [Etext #675]

  The Project Gutenberg Etext of American Notes, by Charles Dickens

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  American Notes for General Circulation by Charles Dickens

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  Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation

  email [email protected]

  American Notes for General Circulation

  PREFACE TO THE FIRST CHEAP EDITION OF "AMERICAN NOTES"

  IT is nearly eight years since this book was first published. I

  present it, unaltered, in the Cheap Edition; and such of my

  opinions as it expresses, are quite unaltered too.

  My readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether the

  influences and tendencies which I distrust in America, have any

  existence not in my imagination. They can examine for themselves

  whether there has been anything in the public career of that

  country during these past eight years, or whether there is anything

  in its present position, at home or abroad, which suggests that

  those influences and tendencies really do exist. As they find the

  fact, they will judge me. If they discern any evidences of wronggoing

  in any direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge

  that I had reason in what I wrote. If they discern no such thing,

  they will consider me altogether mistaken.

  Prejudiced, I never have been otherwise than in favour of the

  United States. No visitor can ever have set foot on those shores,

  with a stronger faith in the Republic than I had, when I landed in

  America.

  I purposely abstain from extending these observations to any

  length. I have nothing to defend, or to explain away. The truth

  is the truth; and neither childish absurdities, nor unscrupulous

  contradictions, can make it otherwise. The earth would still move

  round the sun, though the whole Catholic Church said No.

  I have many friends in America, and feel a grateful interest in the

  country. To represent me as viewing it with ill-nature, animosity,

  or partisanship, is merely to do a very foolish thing, which is

  always a very easy one; and which I have disregarded for eight

  years, and could disregard for eighty more.

  LONDON, JUNE 22, 1850.

  PREFACE TO THE "CHARLES DICKENS" EDITION OF "AMERICAN NOTES"

  MY readers have opportunities of judging for themselves whether the

  influences and tendencies which I distrusted in America, had, at

  that time, any existence but in my imagination. They can examine

  for themselves whether there has been anything in the public career

  of that country since, at home or abroad, which suggests that those

  Page 5

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  influences and tendencies really did exist. As they find the fact,

  they will judge me. If they discern any evidences of wrong-going,

  in any direction that I have indicated, they will acknowledge that

  I had reason in what I wrote. If they discern no such indications,

  they will consider me altogether mistaken - but not wilfully.

  Prejudiced, I am not, and never have been, otherwise than in favour

  of the United States. I have many friends in America, I feel a

  grateful interest in the country, I hope and believe it will

  successfully work out a problem of the highest importance to the

  whole human race. To represent me as viewing AMERICA with illnature,

  coldness, or animosity, is merely to do a very foolish

  thing: which is always a very easy one.

  CHAPTER I - GOING AWAY

  I SHALL never forget the one-fourth serious and three-fourths

  comical astonishment, with which, on the morning of the third of

  January eighteen-hundred-and-forty-two, I opened the door of, and

  put my head into, a 'state-room' on board the Britannia steampacket,

  twelve hundred tons burthen per register, bound for Halifax

  and Boston, and carrying Her Majesty's mails.

  That this state-room had been specially engaged for 'Charles

  Dickens, Esquire, and Lady,' was rendered sufficiently clear even

  to my scared intellect by a very small manuscript, announcing the

  fact, which was pinned on a very flat quilt, covering a very thin

  mattress, spread like a surgical plaster on a most inaccessible

  shelf. But that this was the state-room concerning which Charles

  Dickens, Esquire, and Lady, had held daily and nightly conferences

  for at least four months preceding: that this could by any

  possibility be that small snug chamber of the imagination, which

  Charles Dickens, Esquire, with the spirit of prophecy strong upon

  him, had always foretold would contain at least one little sofa,

  and which his lady, with a modest yet most magnificent sense of its

  limited dimensions, had from the first opined would not hold more

  than two enormous portmanteaus in some odd corner out of sight

  (portmanteaus which could now no more be got in at the door, not to

  say stowed away, than a giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a

  flower-pot): that this utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless,

  and profoundly preposterous box, had the remotest reference to, or

  connection with, those chaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous