COLLECT
ONE OR TWO INDEX ITEMS
Though the ensuing COLLECT and preceding SPECIMEN DAYS are both
largely from memoranda already existing, the hurried peremptory needs
of copy for the printers, already referr'd to--(the musicians' story
of a composer up in a garret rushing the middle body and last of his
score together, while the fiddlers are playing the first parts down
in the concert-room)--of this haste, while quite willing to get the
consequent stimulus of life and motion, I am sure there must have
resulted sundry technical errors. If any are too glaring they will be
corrected in a future edition.
A special word about PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH at the end. On jaunts over
Long Island, as boy and young fellow, nearly half a century ago,
I heard of, or came across in my own experience, characters,
true occurrences, incidents, which I tried my 'prentice hand at
recording--(I was then quite an "abolitionist" and advocate of the
"temperance" and "anti-capital-punishment" causes)--and publish'd
during occasional visits to New York city. A majority of the sketches
appear'd first in the "Democratic Review," others in the "Columbian
Magazine," or the "American Review," of that period. My serious wish
were to have all those crude and boyish pieces quietly dropp'd in
oblivion--but to avoid the annoyance of their surreptitious issue, (as
lately announced, from outsiders,) I have, with some qualms, tack'd
them on here. _A Dough-Face Song_ came out first in the "Evening
Post"--_Blood-Money_, and _Wounded in the House of Friends_, in the
"Tribune.
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