ell of one story and very meanly of the other, and
in consequence was angry at the want of concurrence of my critics? I
suspect not. I rather imagine I felt hurt at discovering how little hold
I had, in my acknowledged name, on a public with whom I fancied myself
on such good terms; and it pained me to see with what little difficulty
a new and a nameless man could push for the place I had believed to be
my own.

"The Daltons" I always wrote, after my habit, in the morning; I never
turned to "Con Cregan" until nigh midnight; and I can still remember the
widely different feelings with which I addressed myself to the task I
liked, and to a story which, in the absurd fashion I have mentioned, was
associated with wounded self-love.

It is scarcely necessary for me to say that there was no plan whatever
in this book. My notion was, that "Con Cregan," once created, would not
fail to find adventures. The vicissitudes of daily poverty would beget
shifts and contrivances; with these successes would come ambition
and daring. Meanwhile a growing knowledge of life would develop his
character, and I should soon see whether he would win the silver spoon
or spoil the horn. I ask pardon in the most humble manner for presuming
for a moment to associate my hero with the great original of Le Sage.

But I used the word "Irish" adjectively, and with the same amount of
qualification that one employs to a diamond, and indeed, as I have read
it in a London paper, to a "Lord."

An American officer, of whom I saw much at the time, was my guide to the
interior of Mexico; he had been originally in the Santa Fe expedition,
was a man of most adventurous disposition, and a love of stirring
incident and peril, that even broken-down health and a failing
constitution could not subdue.

It was often very difficult for me to tear myself away from his Texan
and Mexican experiences, his wild scenes of prairie life, or his sojourn
amongst Indian tribes, and keep to the more commonplace events of my own
story; nor could all my entreaties confine him to those descriptions of
places and scenes which I needed for my own characters.

The saunter after tea-time, with this companion, generally along that
little river that tumbles through the valley of the Bagno di Lucca, was
the usual preparation for my night's work; and I came to it as intensely
possessed by Mexico--dress, manner, and landscape--as though I had been
drawing on the recollection of a former jou