et on. The
narrative flowed freely, and before the day was over I had written
between three and four thousand words. I took up the pleasing task
every stormy day when it was unnecessary for me to visit the office,
and in exactly twenty sittings I had finished a book. I handed the
notes to Scribner's people and asked them to print a few hundred
copies for private circulation. The volume pleased my friends, as
"Round the World" had done. Mr. Champlin one day told me that Mr.
Scribner had read the book and would like very much to publish it for
general circulation upon his own account, subject to a royalty.

The vain author is easily persuaded that what he has done is
meritorious, and I consented. [Every year this still nets me a small
sum in royalties. And thirty years have gone by, 1912.] The letters I
received upon the publication[37] of it were so numerous and some so
gushing that my people saved them and they are now bound together in
scrapbook form, to which additions are made from time to time. The
number of invalids who have been pleased to write me, stating that the
book had brightened their lives, has been gratifying. Its reception in
Britain was cordial; the "Spectator" gave it a favorable review. But
any merit that the book has comes, I am sure, from the total absence
of effort on my part to make an impression. I wrote for my friends;
and what one does easily, one does well. I reveled in the writing of
the book, as I had in the journey itself.

[Footnote 37: Published privately in 1882 under the title _Our
Coaching Trip, Brighton to Inverness_. Published by the Scribners in
1883 under the title of _An American Four-in-Hand in Britain_.]

The year 1886 ended in deep gloom for me. My life as a happy careless
young man, with every want looked after, was over. I was left alone in
the world. My mother and brother passed away in November, within a few
days of each other, while I lay in bed under a severe attack of
typhoid fever, unable to move and, perhaps fortunately, unable to
feel the full weight of the catastrophe, being myself face to face
with death.

I was the first stricken, upon returning from a visit in the East to
our cottage at Cresson Springs on top of the Alleghanies where my
mother and I spent our happy summers. I had been quite unwell for a
day or two before leaving New York. A physician being summoned, my
trouble was pronounced typhoid fever. Professor Dennis was called from
New York and he corr