not even know enough to be fully aware of my own ignorance.
Still, I am fairly sensible of the enormous imperfection
and rashness of this book. When I regard the
map and see the trifling extent of the ground that
I covered—a scrap tucked away in the northeast
corner of the vast multi-colored territory—I
marvel at the assurance I displayed in choosing my
title. Indeed, I have yet to see your United
States. Any Englishman visiting the country for
the second time, having begun with New York, ought
to go round the world and enter by San Francisco,
seeing Seattle before Baltimore and Denver before
Chicago. His perspective might thus be corrected
in a natural manner, and the process would in various
ways be salutary. It is a nice question how many
of the opinions formed on the first visit—and
especially the most convinced and positive opinions—would
survive the ordeal of the second.
As for these brief chapters, I hereby announce that I am not prepared ultimately to stand by any single view which they put forward. There is naught in them which is not liable to be recanted. The one possible justification of them is that they offer to the reader the one thing that, in the very nature of the case, a mature and accustomed observer could not offer—namely, an immediate account (as accurate as I could make it) of the first tremendous impact of the United States on a mind receptive and unprejudiced. The greatest social historian, the most conscientious writer, could not recapture the sensations of that first impact after further intercourse had scattered them.