orts of subjects--reviews, sketches of travel,
biographical notices, fragments from the byeways of history, and the
like, to all kinds of periodical publications, many of them long since
dead and forgotten. That the world should have forgotten all these
articles "goes without saying." But what is not perhaps so common an
incident in the career of a penman is, that _I_ had in the majority
of cases utterly forgotten them, and all about them, until they were
recalled to mind by turning the yellow pages of my treasured but
almost equally forgotten journals! I beg to observe, also, that all
this pen-work was not only printed, but _paid for_. My motives were of
a decidedly mercenary description. "_Hic scribit fama ductus, at ille
fame._" I belonged emphatically to the latter category, and little
indeed of my multifarious productions ever found its final resting
place in the waste-paper basket. They were rejected often, but
re-despatched a second and a third time, if necessary, to some other
"organ," and eventually swallowed by some editor or other.

I am surprised, too, at the amount of locomotion which I contrived to
combine with all this scribbling. I must have gone about, I think,
like a tax-gatherer, with an inkstand slung to my button-hole! And
in truth I was industrious; for I find myself in full swing of some
journey, arriving at my inn tired at night, and finishing and sending
off some article before I went to my bed. But it must have been only
by means of the joint supplies contributed by all my editors that
I could have found the means of paying all the stage-coaches,
diligences, and steamboats which I find the record of my continually
employing. "_Navibus atque Quadrigis petimus bene vivere!_" And
I succeeded by their means in living, if not well, at least very
pleasantly.

For I was born a rambler.

I heard just now a story of a little boy, who replied to the common
question, "What he would like to be when he grew up?" by saying that
he should like to be either a giant or a _retired_ stockbroker! I find
the qualifying adjective delicious, and admire the pronounced taste
for repose indicated by either side of the alternative. But my
propensities were more active, and in the days before I entered my
teens I used always to reply to similar demands, that I would be a
"king's messenger"! I knew no other life which approached so nearly to
perpetual motion. "The road" was my paradise, and it is a true saying
that the