In April, 1840, Mr. and Mrs. Willis sailed for America, taking with them Miss Bessie Stace, a younger sister of Mrs. Willis, who was to make them a visit at Owego. The “Corsair” had not been a success financially, and Dr. Porter had become discouraged and discontinued publication in March, transferring his subscription list to the “Albion.” Since the establishment of the paper, a year before, Willis had ceased his contributions to the New York “Mirror,” and he did not resume them until the end of 1842. But meanwhile he was not left without a market for his literary wares. Just before leaving England he had received a letter from Mr. J. Gregg Wilson, the publisher of “Brother Jonathan,” a new weekly printed in New York, with a circulation of some twenty thousand, informing him of the “Corsair’s” suspension, expressing a warm admiration for his talents, and inviting him to write the “Brother Jonathan” a weekly letter, a column in length, for which he promised to pay him at the highest current rates. To this paper Willis contributed about a year and a half, or up to September, 1841. His humorous poem, “Lady Jane,” was published in installments in the “Dollar,” the monthly edition of “Brother Jonathan.” With both of these periodicals he had a _quasi_ editorial connection, though the real editor was Mr. H. Hastings Weld. He received similar invitations from the two monthlies, “Graham’s Magazine” and “Godey’s Lady’s Book,” which were paying their contributors--among whom were nearly all the principal writers in the country--prices hitherto unknown to American periodicals. Willis was paid at the rate of $50 for an article of four printed pages of the “Lady’s Book,”--less, no doubt, than a writer of equal reputation could command now, but regarded as wildly munificent in 1841. Twelve dollars a page were the regular rates of both these magazines. “The burst on author-land of Graham’s and Godey’s liberal prices,” said Willis, “was like a sunrise without a dawn.” Mr. Charles T. Congdon, in his interesting “Reminiscences of a Journalist,” says that “Mr. Willis was the first magazine writer who was tolerably well paid. At one time, about 1842, he was writing four articles monthly for four magazines, and receiving $100 each.” This means an income of $4,800 a year, but the strain required to keep up such a rate of production must tax the powers of the readiest writer, and it was no wonder if the product was of very uneven excellence. The four magazines here referred to were undoubtedly the “Mirror,” “Graham’s,” “Godey’s,” and “The Ladies’ Companion,” of which Mrs. Sigourney was for a time the editor, and to which Willis contributed in 1842 and 1843 a half dozen stories and a few “Passages from Correspondence” and “Leaves from a Table Book.” Two of these stories are not found among his collected writings: “Poyntz’s Aunt,” a Saratoga tale, which has been mentioned before, and “Fitz Powys and the