As so many others have said, lack of medical care, inadequate sanitation, and various social strictures of the times are a few of the reasons I wouldn't want to live in the 19th Century. But as others have also said, if it were possible to go back in time for a visit, I would go without hesitation. I'd like to spend a year in a typical 19th Century small town or farming community near such a place. I'm most interested in not only what people did every day—how the dressed, worked, ate, entertained themselves when possible, socialized—but especially how they thought. I keep wondering what was it like to live before people were bombarded around the clock with a deluge of information and noise that overwhelms anyone's ability to comprehend it all? What did the passage of time feel like when the only means of communication was in person or by mail? When the only means of transportation was by horse, or by foot, railroad, or boat? Did people feel a greater or lesser emotional connection to others? Were people more patient, knowing that a response to an urgent question would have to come by mail—rather than impatiently listening to music on hold on a telephone call? How did it feel to measure the passage of a season only by the work done each day and the changing weather? We can surmise much about people's daily concerns and joys from letters and diaries, but we can never know what living day-to-day felt like when their experience of time was so different from our own. I'd like to know about that, and then I'd happily return to the 21st Century!