I also
advocated the idea of a far greater protection of general and common
industries and interests being adopted by the Government.

There was in the Senate a truly great man, of German extraction, named
Gottlieb Orth, from Indiana. He was absolutely the founder of the
Bureaus of Education, &c., which are now nourishing in Washington. He
wrote to me saying that he had got the idea of Industrial bureaus from my
pamphlet. In this pamphlet I had opposed the commonly expressed opinion
that we must do nothing to "aggravate the South." That is, we should
burn the powder up by degrees, as the old lady did who was blown to
pieces by the experiment. "Do not drive them to extremes." I declared
that the South would go to extremes in any case, and that we had better
anticipate it. This brought forth strange fruit in after years, long
after the war.

While I was in Boston in 1862, I published by Putnam in New York a book
entitled "Sunshine in Thought," which had, however, been written long
before. It was all directed against the namby-pamby pessimism, "lost
Edens and buried Lenores," and similar weak rubbish, which had then begun
to manifest itself in literature, and which I foresaw was in future to
become a great curse, as it has indeed done. Only five hundred copies of
it were printed.

I was very busy during the first six months of 1863. I wrote a work
entitled "The Art of Conversation, or Hints for Self-Education," which
was at once accepted and published by Carleton, of New York. It had, I
am assured, a very large sale indeed. I also wrote and illustrated, with
the aid of my brother, a very eccentric pamphlet, "The Book of
Copperheads." When Abraham Lincoln died two books were found in his
desk. One was the "Letters of Petroleum V. Nasby," by Dr. R. Locke, and
my "Book of Copperheads," which latter was sent to me to see _and
return_. It was much thumbed, showing that it had been thoroughly read
by Father Abraham.

I also translated Heine's "Book of Songs." Most of these had already
been published in the "Pictures of Travel." I restored them to their
original metres. I also translated the "Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing"
from the German, and finished up, partially illustrated, and published
two juvenile works. One of these was "Mother Pitcher," a collection of
original nursery rhymes for children, which I had written many years
before expressly for my youngest sister, Emily, now Mrs. John Harrison of
Ph