I embarked on a double voyage of discovery, and an exciting life it was! I took note of everything.

I could no more keep my mind from the shifting, changing landscape than an infant can keep his eyes from the shining candle moved across his field of vision.

Thus everything impressed itself on my memory, and with double associations; for I was constantly referring my new world to the old for comparison, and the old to the new for elucidation.

I became a student and philosopher by force of circumstances.
Had I been brought to America a few years earlier, I might have written that in such and such a year my father emigrated, just as I would state what he did for a living, as a matter of family history.
Happening when it did, the emigration became of the most vital importance to me personally.

All the processes of uprooting, transportation, replanting, acclimatization, and development took place in my own soul.