Excerpt from Among the Americans, And, a Stranger in America Three centuries ago the Reformation broke out, when it was pre dicted that everybody would come to have ideas of his own. A few new creeds flew into the air and alighted upon ledges in the old rocks of Opinion, where they have nestled in inadventurous content, and the groves of thought have seldom since been enlivened by new brightness of plumage or cheered by varieties of song. The republican equality and the republican freedom of America, with their infinite incentives and fertility of aspirations, were to me as a land of new color and new notes, where the minds of the people, like keyless watches, wind them selves up and always keep going. I should have been glad to live there for years, so as to write about it; as it is, I content myself with relating a few of the things which I noticed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.