Meanwhile, if he received no solid gain from his exertions, Hawthorne was winning a reputation. In January he had written home: "My worshipful self is a very famous man in London, the 'Athenaeum' having noticed all my articles in the last Token, with long extracts." This refers to the 'Athenaeum' for November 7, 1835, which mentioned "The Wedding Knell" and "The Minister's Black Veil" as being stories "each of which has singularity enough to recommend it to the reader," and gave three columns to a long extract from "The Maypole of Merry Mount"; the notice being no doubt the work of the critic Chorley, who afterward met Hawthorne in England. Thus encouraged, he thought of collecting his tales and publishing them in volume form, connected by the conception of a travelling story-teller, whose shiftings of fortune were to form the interludes and links between the separate stories. A portion of this, prefatory to "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," has been published in the "Mosses," with the heading of "Passages from a Relinquished Work." Goodrich was not disposed to lavish upon his young beneficiary the expense of bringing out a book for him, and the plan of reprinting the tales with this framework around them was given up. The next year Bridge came to Goodrich and insisted on having a simple collection issued, himself taking the pecuniary risk. In this way the "Twice-Told Tales" were first brought collectively before the world; and for the second time this faithful comrade of Hawthorne laid posterity under obligation to himself. It was not till long afterward, however, that Hawthorne knew of his friend's interposition in the affair. Mr. Bridge had not then entered the navy, and was engaged in a great enterprise on the Androscoggin; nothing less than an attempt to dam up that river and apply the water-power to some mills. In July of 1837, Hawthorne went to visit him at Bridgton, and has described his impressions fully in the Note-Books. It was probably his longest absence from Salem since graduating at Bowdoin. "My circumstances cannot long continue as they are," he writes; "and Bridge, too, stands between high prosperity and utter ruin." The change in his own circumstances which Hawthorne looked for did not come through his book. It sold some six or seven hundred copies in a short time, but was received quietly, [Footnote: Some of the sketches were reprinted in England; and "A Rill from the Town Pump" was circulated in pamphlet form by a London bookseller, without the author's name, as a temperance tract.] though Longfellow, then lately established in his Harvard professorship, and known as the author of "Outre-Mer," greeted it with enthusiasm in the "North American Review," which wielded a great influence in literary affairs. On March 7, 1837, Hawthorne sent this note to his former classmate, to announce the new volume.