country. But no such pretensions are asserted for this production, now
in its fortieth thousand. Being the first essay of an impetuous youth
in a field where giants even have not always successfully contended,
it would be a rash assumption to suppose it could receive from those
who confer such honors any high award of merit. It has been before the
public some fifteen years, and has never been reviewed. Perhaps the
forbearance of those who wield the cerebral scalpels may not be
further prolonged, and the book remains amenable to the judgment they
may be pleased to pronounce.

To that portion of the public who have read with approbation so many
thousands of his book, the author may speak with greater confidence.
To this class of his friends he may make disclosures and confessions
pertaining to the secret history of the "Wild Western Scenes," without
the hazard of incurring their displeasure.

Like the hero of his book, the author had his vicissitudes in boyhood,
and committed such indiscretions as were incident to one of his years
and circumstances, but nevertheless only such as might be readily
pardoned by the charitable. Like Glenn, he submitted to a voluntary
exile in the wilds of Missouri. Hence the description of scenery is a
true picture, and several characters in the scenes were real persons.
Many of the occurrences actually transpired in his presence, or had
been enacted in the vicinity at no remote period; and the dream of the
hero--his visit to the haunted island--was truly a dream of the
author's.

But the worst miseries of the author were felt when his work was
completed; he could get no publisher to examine it. He then purchased
an interest in a weekly newspaper, in the columns of which it appeared