ears' term of apprenticeship, he made up his mind to go to Europe. He
had no money; but that did not appear to him an insurmountable
obstacle. He thought he could work his way by writing letters for the
newspapers. So he went up to Philadelphia and visited all the editors.
For three days he went about; but all in vain. The editors gave him
little encouragement. He was on the point of going home, but with no
thought of giving up his project.

At last two different editors offered him each fifty dollars in
advance for twelve letters, and the proprietor of _Graham's Magazine_
paid him forty dollars for some poems. So he went back to Kennett
Square the jubilant possessor of a hundred and forty dollars.

He succeeded in buying his release from the articles of
apprenticeship, and immediately prepared to set out on foot for New
York, where he and two others were to take ship for England. That was
the beginning of a career of travel which lasted many years, and
brought him both fame and money.

In a delightful essay on "The First Journey I Ever Made," he says that
while other great travelers have felt in childhood an inborn
propensity to go out into the world to see the regions beyond, he had
the intensest desire to climb upward--so that without shifting his
horizon, he could yet extend it, and take in a far wider sweep of
vision. "I envied every bird," he goes on, "that sat singing on the
topmost bough of the great, century-old cherry tree; the weathercock
on our barn seemed to me to whirl in a higher region of the air; and
to rise from the earth in a balloon was a bliss which I would almost
have given my life to enjoy." His desire to ascend soon took the
practical form of wishing to climb a mountain. By great economy he
saved up fifteen dollars, and with a companion who had twenty-seven
dollars (enormous wealth!) he set out for a walking tour to the
Catskills, with the hope of going even so far as the Connecticut
valley.

No doubt the feelings he experienced in setting out on that excursion,
at the end of his first year as an apprentice, would apply equally
well to the greater journey he was to attempt a year later.

"The steamboat from Philadelphia deposited me at Bordentown, on the
forenoon of a warm, clear day. I buckled on my knapsack, inquired the
road to Amboy, and struck off, resolutely, with the feelings of an
explorer on the threshold of great discoveries. The sun shone
brightly, the woods were green, and the m