ked with N.P. Willis on the
_Mirror_, and had travelled far in the wild West despite an accident
in his youth which had crushed his leg between a boat and the wharf,
leaving him a life-long cripple. In this western journeying he
gathered material for _A Winter in the West_ and _Wild Scenes in
Forest and Prairie_. He had already written _Vanderlyn_, and now in
the book-shop was daily discussing his plans for _Grayslaer_. No hint
came to the minds of those who listened to his witty talk in idle
hours at the book-shop that in another ten years he would be taken
from his last city home in Greene Street to live out the remaining
thirty-four years of his life in the asylum at Harrisburg, Pa., a
mental wreck.

It was Hoffman who introduced Lewis Gaylord Clark to the book-shop.
Clark had been associated with him on the _Knickerbocker_ magazine,
and it was Clark who continued that publication for many years in the
office on Broadway, just south of Cortlandt Street. To the office very
often went his twin brother, Willis Gaylord Clark, editor of the
Philadelphia _Gazette_, who contributed his now long-forgotten verse
to his brother's magazine almost to the day of his death.

It was quite natural that John L. Stephens should make Bartlett's
book-shop a headquarters while he was in town, for Bartlett and he
were firm friends of years' standing, and their minds ran along in
very much the same historical groove. Many a story the famous
traveller recounted to his friend and to the others who were gathered
there, and his presence was eagerly looked for. He had been to Egypt
and had written from there letters that were published in the
_Knickerbocker_ when Hoffman was at its head. He had been to Arabia,
to Poland, and to half a dozen other countries, and had written of his
travels with a straightforward directness that was very much like his
clear ringing talk. His visits to the book-shop happened years before
he became interested in the Panama Railroad, for when this project
came to his hand he devoted so much of himself to the building of the
road across the Isthmus that he gave little time to writing.

Another man who lingered in the book-shop more than any of the others
was a sort of _protege_ of Clark's, since Clark had in a great
measure discovered him. His name was Frederick S. Cozzens, a wine
merchant, and almost every afternoon he walked from his place around
the next corner in Vesey Street, the second block below Broadway. I