Publisher's Synopsis
Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition of American Notes.
This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work by Charles Dickens, which is now, at last, again available to you.
Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside American Notes:
But that this was the state-room concerning which Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady, had held daily and nightly conferences for at least four months preceding: that this could by any possibility be that small snug chamber of the imagination, which Charles Dickens, Esquire, with the spirit of prophecy strong upon him, had always foretold would contain at least one little sofa, and which his lady, with a modest yet most magnificent sense of its limited dimensions, had from the first opined would not hold more than two enormous portmanteaus in some odd corner out of sight (portmanteaus which could now no more be got in at the door, not to say stowed away, than a giraffe could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot): that this utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly preposterous box, had the remotest reference to, or connection with, those chaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous little bowers, sketched by a masterly hand, in the highly varnished lithographic plan hanging up in the agents counting-house in the city of London: that this room of state, in short, could be anything but a pleasant fiction and cheerful jest of the captains, invented and put in practice for the better relish and enjoyment of the real state-room presently to be disclosed: - these were truths which I really could not, for the moment, bring my mind at all to bear upon or comprehend.
...And with this; and with showing how, - by very nearly closing the door, and twining in and out like serpents, and by counting the little washing slab as standing-room, - we could manage to insinuate four people into it, all at one time; and entreating each other to observe how very airy it was (in dock), and how there was a beautiful port-hole which could be kept open all day (weather permitting), and how there was quite a large bulls-eye just over the looking-glass which would render shaving a perfectly easy and delightful process (when the ship didnt roll too much); we arrived, at last, at the unanimous conclusion that it was rather spacious than otherwise: though I do verily believe that, deducting the two berths, one above the other, than which nothing smaller for sleeping in was ever made except coffins, it was no bigger than one of those hackney cabriolets which have the door behind, and shoot their fares out, like sacks of coals, upon the pavement.
...For every gallant ship was riding slowly up and down, and every little boat was splashing noisily in the water; and knots of people stood upon the wharf, gazing with a kind of dread delight on the far-famed fast American steamer; and one party of men were taking in the milk, or, in other words, getting the cow on board; and another were filling the icehouses to the very throat with fresh provisions; with butchers-meat and garden-stuff, pale sucking-pigs, calves heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and poultry out of all proportion; and others were coiling ropes and busy with oakum yarns; and others were lowering heavy packages into the hold; and the pursers head was barely visible as it loomed in a state, of exquisite perplexity from the midst of a vast pile of passengers luggage; and there seemed to be nothing going on anywhere, or uppermost in the mind of anybody, but preparations for this mighty voyage.
