merits of mine were--and
it was years ere I ever gave them a thought--the public, which is always
eager for something new, took to them at once.

I say that for years I never gave them a thought. All of the principal
poems except the "Barty" and "Breitmann as a Politician," were merely
written to fill up letters to C. A. Bristed, of New York, and I kept no
copies of them--in fact, utterly _forgot_ them. _Weingeist_ was first
written in a letter to a sister of Captain Colton, with the remark that
it was easier to write such a ballad than any prose. But Bristed
published them _a mon insu_ in a sporting paper. Years after I learned
that I published one called "Breitmann's Sermon" in _Leslie's Magazine_.
This I have never recovered. If I write so much about these poems now, I
certainly was not vain of them when written. The public found them out
long before I did, and it is not very often that it gets ahead of a poet
in appreciating his own works.

However, I was "awful busy" in those days. I had hardly begun on the
_Press_ ere I found that it had a weekly paper, made up from the daily
type transferred, which only just paid its expenses. Secondly, I
discovered that there was not a soul on the staff except myself who had
had any experience of weekly full editing. I at once made out a
schedule, showing that by collecting and grouping agricultural and
industrial items, putting in two or three columns of original matter, and
bringing in a story to go through the daily first, the weekly could be
vastly improved at very little expense.

Colonel Forney admired the scheme, but asked "who was to carry it out." I
replied that I would. He remonstrated, very kindly, urging that I had
all I could do as it was. I answered, "Colonel Forney, this is not a
matter of time, but _method_. There is always time for the man who knows
how to lay it out." So I got up a very nice paper. But for a very long
time I could not get an agent to solicit advertisements who knew the
business. The weekly paid its expenses and nothing more. But one day
there came to me a young man named M. T. Wolf. He was of Pennsylvania
German stock. He had lost a small fortune in the patent medicine
business and wanted employment badly. I suggested that, until something
else could be found, he should try his hand at collecting "advers."

Now, be it observed, as Mozart was born to music, and some men have a
powerful instinct to study medicine, and other