“This series will run through the year, and you may like to know how it all came about. Know then that my head gradually got so big with the muchness of learning that I had to rig up a safety valve of some sort, or _bust_! This would have been an unpleasant denouement for myself and especially tough on the immediate surroundings, human or otherwise, and so I hit upon a plan to put all my goods in the show window and get credit for a big reinforcement behind the counter! Great scheme! eh! (that is if they only won’t try to get a look inside!) My note-books, visible and intangible, have been multiplying from year to year with no available opportunities of keeping pace with them in my accustomed magazine facilities. So I concluded to materialize my material in the form of a dainty book, comprising the more interesting incidents of my journal, arranging the incidents or episodes chronologically--a timely item or two for each week in the year, so that the book might serve as a sort of pictorial reference calendar for the saunterer, affording him at least some few hints of the rich store of wonders which surround him unheeded in every field and by every path. I believe there is real true missionary possibility in such a book as that. My plan completed and a little material duly prepared I broached the matter to the Harpers. They jumped at it at once, and much to my astonishment made me the offer to run it for the entire year of 52 weeks in the ‘Young People,’ an unheard of thing! and something which I had never dreamed of. By this arrangement I not only received much more liberal compensation for the large number of designs than would have been financially possible on the first basis, but in addition realized generously upon the letter press which in the original plan would have been furnished gratis on the customary plan of books paying royalty. In addition to this, inasmuch as the cost of the entire series would of course be charged to the ‘Y. P.’ it gave me a bigger margin both in number and scope of the designs, so that the book as now shaped will be more generously illustrated than as first planned. The series will end with the Xmas number and will then begin to take its book form with numerous fresh additions of tail-pieces and other morceaux, comprising some 300 illustrations. It will not be issued however until the Christmas of 1891 as I have already on the press a volume for the coming season. “The title of this--my fifth book--is ‘Strolls by Starlight and Sunshine.’ My two midnight articles taking the lead, and followed by my other magazine papers published during the last two years. ‘Bird-Notes,’ (Harper’s), ‘Bird-Cradles,’ (Scribner’s), ‘Prehistoric Botanists,’ (Century), and ‘Wild Garden,’ (Harper’s), this September (now due). “You shall see the volume as soon as you are likely to desire it, and whether you take any stock in it or not you will, I hope, give me credit of being a well meaning fellow anyhow.