To those chapters, I have added in this collection, some estimates of American life in Europe, and some European estimates of American life; with my ultimate experiences in the War after my return to my own country. I cannot hope that they will be received with the same favor, either here or abroad, as that which greeted their original publication. But no man ought to let the first four years of his majority slip away unrecorded. I would rather publish a tolerable book now than a possibly good one hereafter. CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT, AND HIS Romaunt abroad during the War. CHAPTER 1. MY IMPRESSMENT. "Here is a piece of James Franklin's printing press, Mr. Townsend," said Mr. Pratt to me, at Newport the other day,--"Ben. Franklin wrote for the paper, and set type upon it. The press was imported from England in 1730, or thereabouts." He produced a piece of wood, a foot in length, and then laid it away in its drawer very sacredly. "I should like to write to that press, Mr. Pratt," I said,--"there would be no necessity in such a case of getting off six columns for to-night's mail." "Well!" said Mr. Pratt, philosophically, "I have a theory that a man grows up to machinery. As your day so shall your strength be. I believe you have telegraphed up to a House instrument, haven't you?" "Mr. Pratt," cried I, with some indignation, "your memory is too good. This is Newport, and I have come down to see the surf. Pray, do not remind me of hot hours in a newspaper office, the click of a Morse dispatch, and work far into the midnight!" So I left Mr. Pratt, of the Newport _Mercury_, with an ostentation of affront, and bade James Brady, the boatman, hoist sail and carry me over to Dumpling Rocks. On the grassy parapet of the crumbling tower which once served the purposes of a fort, the transparent water hungering at its base, the rocks covered with fringe spotting the channel, the ocean on my right hand lost in its own vastness, and Newport out of mind save when the town bells rang, or the dip of oars beat in the still swell of Narragansett,--I lay down, chafing and out of temper, to curse the only pleasurable labor I had ever undertaken. To me all places were workshops: the seaside, the springs, the summer mountains, the cataracts, the theatres, the panoramas of islet-fondled rivers speeding by strange cities. I was condemned to look upon them all with mercenary eyes, to turn their gladness into torpid prose, and speak their praises in turgid columns. Never nepenthe, never _abandonne_, always wide-awake, and watching for saliences, I had gone abroad like a falcon, and roamed at home like a hungry jackal. Six fingers on my hand, one long and pointed, and ever dropping gall; the ineradicable stain upon my thumb; the widest of my circuits, with all my adventure, a paltry sheet of foolscap; and the world in which I dwelt, no place for thought, or dreaminess, or love-making,--only the fierce, fast, flippant existence of news!