The design of the following pages is to present the curious public with a connected and intelligible account of the early history, the travels and the eccentricities of that theological 'knight errant,' Lorenzo Dow. His journal, of which this work is an abridgement, is both too bulky and too expensive, for general reading. It is moreover crowded with much unnecessary detail; of no interest whatever to the great mass of the reading public. These unimportant incidents are here omitted, while every fact necessary to illustrate his character, and every transaction which is either curious, remarkable or profitable, is retained.
The language of Lorenzo has been employed wherever possible, excepting that it has been carefully corrected and occasionally abridged of a redundant phrase, without changing the meaning of the writer. The sense of the original journal has been no where designedly mutilated.
