I had for a long time, at intervals, been at work on a book to be entitled the "Origin of American Popular Phrases." I had scissored from newspapers, collected from negro minstrels and Western rustics, and innumerable New England friends, as well as books and old songs and comic almanacs and the like, a vast amount of valuable material. This work, which had cost me altogether a full year's labour, had been accepted by a New York publisher, and was in the printer's hands. I never awaited anything with such painful anxiety as I did this publication, for I had never been in such straits nor needed money so much, and it seemed as if the more earnestly I sought for employment the more it evaded me. And then almost as soon as my manuscript was in the printer's hands his office was burned, and the work perished, for I had not kept a copy. It was a great loss, but from the instant when I heard of it to this day I never had five minutes' trouble over it, and more probably not one. I had done my _very best_ to make a good book and some money, and could do no more. When I was a very small boy I was deeply impressed with the story in the "Arabian Nights" of the prisoner who knew that he was going to be set free because a rat had run away with his dinner. So I, at the age of seven, announced to my father that I believed that whenever a man had bad luck, good was sure to follow, which opinion he did not accept. And to this day I hold it, because, reckoning up the chances of life, it is true for most people. At any rate, I derived some comfort from the fact that the accident was reported in all the newspapers all over the Union. About the 1st of July, 1866, we left my father's house to go to Cape May, where we remained for two months. In September we went to a very good boarding-house in Philadelphia, kept by Mrs. Sandgren. She possessed and showed me Tegner's original manuscript of "Anna and Axel." I confess that I never cared over-much for Tegner, and that I infinitely prefer the original Icelandic Saga of Frithiof to his sago-gruel imitation of strong soup. VI. LIFE ON THE PRESS. 1866-1869.