In youth's wild days, it cannot but be pleasant
This idle roaming round and round the world,
With wildfire spirits and heart disengaged.
_Anster's Faustus._
When one first contemplates a voyage of many thousand miles, attended
with long absence, loss of old associates, together with all the charms
of home, country, and friends, often too lightly estimated whilst
possessed, but always sorely missed when no longer within call; one is
yet, and this through no lack of sensibility, apt to regard the
sacrifice about to be made to duty as sufficiently light, and, with the
aid of manhood and a little philosophy, easy of endurance. The very
task, which a resolution of this grave nature necessarily imposes, of
making as little of the matter as possible to those dear ones who yield
up their fears, and subdue their strong affections, in obedience to your
judgment, serves for a time the double purpose of hoodwinking oneself as
well as blinding those on whom we seek to practise this kind imposition.
Next comes the bustle of getting ready, assisted and cheered by the
redoubled attentions of all who love, or feel an interest in one's
fortunes. Amidst the excitement, then, of these various feelings, the
deep-seated throb of natural apprehension, or home regret, if even felt,
struggling for expression, is checked or smothered in the loud note of
preparation. The day of departure is fixed at length, it is true; but
then it is not yet come: even when contemplating its near approach, one
feels wondrous firm and most stoically resolved: at last, however, come
it does; and now our chief friend Philosophy, like many other friends,
is found most weak when most needed. In vain do we invoke his approved
maxims, hitherto so glibly dealt out to silence all gainsayers; yet now,
they are either found inapt or are forgotten wholly, until, after a
paltry show of defence, braggart Philosophy fairly takes to his heels,
and leaves us abandoned to the will of old mother Nature. Now, indeed,
arrives the tug; and I, for my part, pity the man who, however savagely
resolute, does not feel and own her power. The adieus of those one loves
are, at best,--that is, for the shortest absence,--sufficiently
unpleasant; but when there lie years, and, to the eye of affection,
dangers, in the way of the next meeting, as the old Scotch ballad has
it, "O but it is sair to part!" I should, I confess, were I free to
choose, prefer the ignominy of cowardly flight, to the greatest triumph
firmness ever yet achieved, and be constrained to hear and respond to
that last long "good-b'ye!"
As I honestly own that, for various good reasons, I set out with the
intention of keeping such a close record of my feelings and doings as my
errant habits might permit, with the premeditated design also of giving
them to that public which from the beginning had decided that I should
do so, I concluded there was nothing like an early start; and finding
these thoughts preface, or rather commence, my journal, so do I give
them like precedence here.