CHILDREN MY FIRST PATRONS—A VISIT TO NEW ORLEANS—FEELINGS OF HUMILIATION—THE MICE EAT MY PAPERS—A WRONG CALCULATION.

If thus I met with opposition, I had also my success, nay, I must say, my triumphs. My first patrons were the children themselves, then the mothers, and then, of course, the fathers. In the early part of the year 1846 I made a trip from Boston to the South, returning by the way of the Mississippi and the Ohio. I received many a kind welcome under the name of the fictitious hero whom I had made to tell my stories. Sometimes, it is true, I underwent rather sharp cross-questioning, and frequently was made to feel that I held my honors by a rather questionable title. I, who had undertaken to teach truth, was forced to confess that fiction lay at the foundation of my scheme! My innocent young readers, however, did not suspect me: they had taken all I had said as positively true, and I was, of course, Peter Parley himself.

"Did you really write that book about Africa?" said a black-eyed, dark-haired girl of some eight years old, at Mobile.

I replied in the affirmative.

"And did you really get into prison there!"

"No; I was never in Africa."

"Never in Africa?"

"Never."

"Well, then, why did you say you had been there?"

On another occasion—I think at Savannah—a gentleman called upon me, introducing his two grandchildren, who were anxious to see Peter Parley. The girl rushed up to me, and kissed me at once. We were immediately the best friends in the world. The boy, on the contrary, held himself aloof, and ran his eye over me, up and down, from top to toe. He then walked round, surveying me with the most scrutinizing gaze. After this he sat down, and during the interview took no further notice of me. At parting he gave me a keen look, but said nothing. The next day the gentleman called and told me that his grandson, as they were on their way home, said to him,—

"Grandfather, I wouldn't have anything to do with that man; he ain't Peter Parley."

"How do you know that?" said the grandfather.

"Because," said the boy, "he hasn't got his foot bound up, and he don't walk with a crutch!"

On my arrival at New Orleans I was kindly received, and had the honors of a public welcome. The proceedings were gratifying to me; and, even if they stood alone, would make amends for much misunderstanding and opposition.

Hitherto I have spoken chiefly of the books I have written for children, the design of which was as much to amuse as to instruct them. These comprise the entire series called Parley's Tales, with many others, bearing Parley's name. As to works for education—school-books, including readers, histories, geographies, &c., books for popular reading, and a wilderness of prose and poetry admitting of no classification—it is unnecessary to recount them. This is the closing chapter of my literary history, and I have little indeed to say, and that is a confession.

In looking at the long list of my publications, in reflecting upon the large numbers that have been sold, I feel far more of humiliation than of triumph. If I have sometimes taken to heart the soothing flatteries of the public, it has ever been speedily succeeded by the conviction that my life has been, on the whole, a series of mistakes, and especially in that portion of it which has been devoted to authorship. I have written too much, and have done nothing really well. I know, better than any one can tell me, that there is nothing in this long catalogue that will give me a permanent place in literature. A few things may struggle upon the surface for a time, but—like the last leaves of a tree in autumn, forced at length to quit their hold and drop into the stream—even these will disappear, and my name and all I have done will be forgotten.

A recent event, half-ludicrous and half-melancholy, has led me into this train of reflection. On going to Europe in 1851 I sent my books and papers to a friend, to be kept till my return. Among them was a large box of business documents—letters, accounts, receipts, bills paid, notes liquidated—comprising the transactions of several years, long since passed away. Shortly after my return to New York, in preparing to establish myself and family, I caused these things to be sent to me. On opening the particular box just mentioned, I found it a complete mass of shavings, shreds, fragments. My friend had put it carefully away in the upper loft of his barn, and there it became converted into a universal mouse-nest! The history of whole generations of the mischievous little rogues was still visible; beds, galleries, play-grounds, birth-places, and even graves, were in a state of excellent preservation. Several wasted and shrivelled forms of various sizes—the limbs curled up, the eyes extinct, the teeth disclosed, the long, slender tails straight and stiffened—testified to the joys and sorrows of the races that had flourished there.

On exploring this mass of ruins, I discovered here and there a file of letters eaten through, the hollow cavity evidently having been the happy and innocent cradle of childhood to these destroyers. Sometimes I found a bed lined with paid bills, and sometimes the pathway of a gallery paved with liquidated accounts. What a mass of thoughts, of feelings, cares, anxieties, were thus made the plunder of these thoughtless creatures! In examining the papers I found, for instance, letters from N. P. Willis, written five-and-twenty years ago, with only "Dear Sir" at the beginning, and "Yours truly" at the end. I found epistles of nearly equal antiquity from many other friends—sometimes only the heart eaten out, and sometimes the whole body gone.

For all purposes of record, these papers were destroyed. I was alone, for my family had not yet returned from Europe: it was the beginning of November, and I began to light my fire with these relics. For two whole days I pored over them, buried in the reflections which the reading of the fragments suggested. Absorbed in this dreary occupation, I forgot the world without, and was only conscious of bygone scenes which came up in review before me. It was as if I had been in the tomb, and was reckoning with the past. How little was there in all that I was thus called to remember, save of care, and struggle, and anxiety; and how were all the thoughts, and feelings, and experiences, which seemed mountains in their day, levelled down to the merest grains of dust! A note of hand—perchance of a thousand dollars—what a history rose up in recollection as I looked over its scarcely legible fragments!—what clouds of anxiety had its approaching day of maturity cast over my mind! How had I been, with a trembling heart, to some bank-president—he a god, and I a craven worshipper—making my offering of some other note for a discount, which might deliver me from the wrath to come! With what anxiety have I watched the lips of the oracle, for my fate was in his hands! A simple monosyllable—yes or no—might save or ruin me. What a history was in that bit of paper!—and yet it was destined only to serve as stuffing for the beds of vermin.

I ought, no doubt, to have smiled at all this; but I confess it made me serious. Nor was it the most humiliating part of my reflections. I have been too familiar with care, conflict, disappointment, to mourn over them very deeply, now that they were passed. The seeming fatuity of such a mass of labors as these papers indicated, compared with their poor results, however it might humble, could not distress me. But there were many things suggested by these letters, all in rags as they were, that caused positive humiliation. They revived in my mind the vexations, misunderstandings, controversies of other days; and now, reviewed in the calm light of time, I could discover the mistakes of judgment, of temper, of policy, that I had made. I turned back to my letter-book; I reviewed my correspondence; and I came to the conclusion that in almost every difficulty which had arisen in my path, even if others were wrong, I was not altogether right: in most cases, prudence, conciliation, condescension, might have averted these evils. Thus the thorns which had wounded me and others too, as it seemed, had generally sprung up from the seeds I had sown, or had thriven upon the culture my own hands had unwisely bestowed.

At first I felt disturbed at the ruin which had been wrought in these files of papers. Hesitating and doubtful, I consigned them one by one to the flames. At last the work was complete; all had perished, and the feathery ashes had leaped up in the strong draught of the chimney and disappeared for ever. I felt a relief at last; I smiled at what had happened; I warmed my chill fingers over the embers; I felt that a load was off my shoulders. "At least," said I in my heart, "these things are now passed; my reckoning is completed, the account is balanced, the responsibilities of those bygone days are liquidated; let me burden my bosom with them no more!" Alas, how fallacious my calculation! A few months only had passed, when I was called to contend with a formidable claim which came up from the midst of transactions to which these extinct papers referred, and against which they constituted my defence. As it chanced, I was able to meet and repel it by documents which survived; but the event caused me deep reflection. I could not but remark that, however we may seek to cover our lives with forgetfulness, their records still exist, and these may come up against us when we have no vouchers to meet the charges which are thus presented. Who, then, will be our helper?