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
in consecutive chapters. The subscribers were pleased with it, and
desired to possess it in a volume; but still no publisher would
undertake it,--the author had no reputation in the literary world. He
offered it for fifty dollars, but could find no purchaser at any
price. Believing the British booksellers more accommodating, a friend
was employed to make a fair copy in manuscript, at a certain number of
cents per hundred words. The work was sent to a British publisher,
with whom it remained many months, but was returned, accompanied by a
note declining to treat for it.

Undeterred by the rebuffs of two worlds, the author had his cherished
production published on his own account, and was remunerated by the
sale of the whole edition. After the tardy sale of several subsequent
editions by houses of limited influence, the book had the good
fortune, finally, to fall into the hands of the gigantic establishment
whose imprint is now upon its title-page. And now, the author is
informed, it is regularly and liberally ordered by the London
booksellers, and is sold with an increasing rapidity in almost every
section of the Union.

Such are the hazards, the miseries, and sometimes the rewards, of
aut