The Japanese have a proverb which declares that "once seeing is better than an hundred times telling about," and this good proverb has been the guiding star of my roamings, and has suggested practical participation in some of my occupations. My first attempt to see the antipodes was not successful. It did not have the necessary parental sanction, and I was _brought back_ before I had measured very much longitude and latitude; but the determination shown in the attempt indicated so strong a tendency that it led to promise of assistance and permission to travel as a reward for certain accomplishments in study that were considered to be impossible, as judged by former efforts, but which became surprisingly easy to the boy who saw a way to the other side of the world in the task.
I spent my sixteenth birthday on the Island of Java, and saw Japan and China at the most interesting periods of their recent history--Japan, in Feudal Times, before any of the changes that have made her the last and greatest wonder of the world; and China, at the close of the Taiping rebellion, wherein more than thirty millions of persons lost their lives, and about which there hovered a lawlessness the like of which the world has not witnessed elsewhere.
Chance and restless change have thrown me into companionship with the most elemental of human beings; and have also led me to the acquaintance, and into the affections of the wisest and loveliest of men and women--the rarest blossoms of our generation. Opportunity has found me available for the command of a crew of Cantonese pirates, on a Chinese lorcha, at a time when piracy was a common occupation in the China Sea; and for the mismanagement of a French Grand Opera Company, when no one else was foolish enough to undertake it.
The foregoing are but glimpses of the opportunities for observation out of which I draw my deductions relative to profitable living. Four complete trips around the world--two of them before the time of ocean steamship lines and continental railroads; thirty-six trips across the American Continent by various rail, water and stage routes; sixteen voyages across the Pacific Ocean, and many across the Atlantic; intermittent periods of residence in many different countries of Europe, in China, in India, in Japan and in different localities in the Americas; as well as visits to parts remote from the lines of travel, such as South Africa, Yucatan and the mountain regions of Mexico and Central America, that are the type of all of the South American countries; and all of which residences and visits have been chosen at times of greatest interest in each locality; in response to the invitation of the Spirit-of-Adventure by which I have been led--these, together with no less than thirty-eight distinct occupations, embrace the sum of my opportunities.