A relative of my mother's had emigrated to the United States many years since, and had thriven there as a farmer.

He had given me a general invitation to visit him if I ever crossed the Atlantic.

The long period of inaction, under the name of _rest_, to which the doctor's decision had condemned me, could hardly be more pleasantly occupied, as I thought, than by paying a visit to my relation, and seeing what I could of America in that way.
After a brief sojourn at New York, I started by railway for the residence of my host--Mr.Isaac Meadowcroft, of Morwick Farm.
There are some of the grandest natural prospects on the face of creation in America.

There is also to be found in certain States of the Union, by way of wholesome contrast, scenery as flat, as monotonous, and as uninteresting to the traveler, as any that the earth can show.
The part of the country in which M.Meadowcroft's farm was situated fell within this latter category.

I looked round me when I stepped out of the railway-carriage on the platform at Morwick Station; and I said to myself, "If to be cured means, in my case, to be dull, I have accurately picked out the very place for the purpose." I look back at those words by the light of later events; and I pronounce them, as you will soon pronounce them, to be the words of an essentially rash man, whose hasty judgment never stopped to consider what surprises time and chance together might have in store for him.
Mr.Meadowcroft's eldest son, Ambrose, was waiting at the station to drive me to the farm.
There was no forewarning, in the appearance of Ambrose Meadowcroft, of the strange and terrible events that were to follow my arrival at Morwick.