Not seeing much to be done in my own country, I resolved to go abroad. I required Priscilla to make herself ready to accompany me, and to take her husband along with her. I know not whether this latter request pleased her or not. Woman is woman even when under the power of the Evil One; and that Priscilla loved me, and loved me madly, she hardly pretended to conceal. I had, perhaps, loved her, too, for a moment, when I might do so innocently, and I loved her still as much as remained in me the power to love. But love or lust was not precisely my ruling passion, and I would as soon have taken another with me as Priscilla, could she have served my purpose as well. Even in my worst days I was as much repelled as attracted by a woman who could betray her husband’s honor, and I always found a woman, mastered by her passion, and ready to give up all for love, as it is called, a troublesome rather than an agreeable companion. A man wishes to find in the woman of his affections a free soul, moral dignity,—a tender, loving heart, indeed, but with sufficient strength to stand alone. Lads and lasses in their teens have very false notions of love, and this is why love so seldom survives the honeymoon, and why so many complain of unrequited affection and broken hearts. But I could not do without Priscilla, and I wished her husband to accompany her to avoid scandal, and also to serve as manager, to take charge of all the arrangements in travelling, residing in one place, or in going from that to another, for which he was admirably adapted. I found him far more intelligent, far more of a man than I had been led to suspect from his ready submission to petticoat government. Priscilla had entirely mistaken him, and might one day find him more than her master. In a couple of months our arrangements were made for the voyage to Europe, and for a longer or shorter residence abroad, as we should find it convenient. We embarked from Boston in one of the Cunard steamers for Liverpool, in May, 1843. We arrived at Liverpool after a pleasant passage of thirteen days, and as soon as we could land, and get our baggage through the custom-house, we departed for London, where we proposed stopping for some weeks. Let not the reader fear that I am about to inflict on him a journal of my travels in England and on the Continent. I did not go abroad as a curious traveller, to see other lands, and study the ways, manners, customs, institutions, laws, politics, or religion of other nations. I went for a special object, and to that I confined myself. I could, if I would, tell very little more than I might have learned at home. My mission was not to observe and learn, but to do, and to prepare, and hasten on the grand movement I contemplated.