d by a laudable desire to publish a pretty Californian book--HIS
first essay in publication--and at the same time to foster Eastern
immigration by an exhibit of the Californian literary product; but,
looking back upon his venture, I am inclined to think that the little
volume never contained anything more poetically pathetic or touchingly
imaginative than that gentle conception. Equally simple and trustful
was his selection of myself as compiler. It was based somewhat, I think,
upon the fact that "the artless Helicon" I boasted "was Youth," but I
imagine it was chiefly owing to the circumstance that I had from the
outset, with precocious foresight, confided to him my intention of not
putting any of my own verses in the volume. Publishers are appreciative;
and a self-abnegation so sublime, to say nothing of its security, was
not without its effect.

We settled to our work with fatuous self-complacency, and no suspicion
of the trouble in store for us, or the storm that was to presently
hurtle around our devoted heads. I winnowed the poems, and he exploited
a preliminary announcement to an eager and waiting press, and we moved
together unwittingly to our doom. I remember to have been early struck
with the quantity of material coming in--evidently the result of some
popular misunderstanding of the announcement. I found myself in daily
and hourly receipt of sere and yellow fragments, originally torn from
some dead and gone newspaper, creased and seamed from long folding in
wallet or pocketbook. Need I say that most of them were of an emotional
or didactic nature; need I add any criticism of these homely souvenirs,
often discolored by the morning coffee, the evening tobacco, or, heaven
knows! perhaps blotted by too easy tears! Enough that I knew now what
had become of those original but never recopied verses which filled the
"Poet's Corner" of every country newspaper on the coast. I knew now
the genesis of every didactic verse that "coldly furnished forth the
marriage table" in the announcement of weddings in the rural press. I
knew now who had read--and possibly indited--the dreary hic jacets of
the dead in their mourning columns. I knew now why certain letters
of the alphabet had been more tenderly considered than others, and
affectionately addressed. I knew the meaning of the "Lines to Her who
can best understand them," and I knew that they HAD been understood.
The morning's post buried my table beneath these withered leave