A well-known bookseller of San Francisco one day handed me a collection of certain poems which had already appeared in Pacific Coast magazines and newspapers, with the request that I should, if possible, secure further additions to them, and then make a selection of those which I considered the most notable and characteristic for a single volume to be issued by him. I have reason to believe that this unfortunate man was actuated 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. [Illustration: WE SETTLED TO OUR WORK] [Illustration: A CIRCULATION IT HAD NEVER KNOWN BEFORE] 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 pocket-book. Need I say that most of them were of an emotional or didactic nature; need I add any criticism of these homely souvenirs, often discoloured 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 re-copied 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