have been deliberate; we hear nothing of those experiments in
counting-houses or lawyers' offices, of which a permanent invocation
to the Muse is often the inconsequent sequel. He began to write, and
to try and dispose of his writings; and he remained at Salem
apparently only because his family, his mother and his two sisters,
lived there. His mother had a house, of which during the twelve years
that elapsed until 1838, he appears to have been an inmate. Mr.
Lathrop learned from his surviving sister that after publishing
_Fanshawe_ he produced a group of short stories entitled _Seven Tales
of my Native Land_, and that this lady retained a very favourable
recollection of the work, which her brother had given her to read. But
it never saw the light; his attempts to get it published were
unsuccessful, and at last, in a fit of irritation and despair, the
young author burned the manuscript.

There is probably something autobiographic in the striking little tale
of _The Devil in Manuscript_. "They have been offered to seventeen
publishers," says the hero of that sketch in regard to a pile of his
own lucubrations.

"It would make you stare to read their answers.... One man
publishes nothing but school-books; another has five novels
already under examination;... another gentleman is just
giving up business, on purpose, I verily believe, to avoid
publishing my book. In short, of all the seventeen
booksellers, only one has vouchsafed even to read my tales;
and he--a literary dabbler himself, I should judge--has the
impertinence to criticise them, proposing what he calls vast
improvements, and concluding, after a general sentence of
condemnation, with the definitive assurance that he will not