excite additional interest in agriculture among my 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