This is an interesting and detailed journal of his trip to America and travels therein. Using Philadelphia as his base, Beck commented on the city's society and institutions, and mentions locals, including an interesting note on Titian R. Peale. Other areas visited included: Atlantic City, St. Louis, Colorado, Utah, California and New York, where he visited the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company and Washington D.C., where he met, and described, artist Henry Ulke. The volume is filled with memorabilia: advertisements, photographs, playbills, menus, original pencil and watercolor sketches, some of machinery.