One lady even wrote to inquire whether my childhood were not represented in Shocky, the little lad out of the poor-house.

A biographical sketch of me in Italian goes so far as to state that among the hard resorts by which I made a living in my early life was the teaching of a Sunday-school in Chicago.
No one knows so well as I the faults of immaturity and inexperience that characterize this book.

But perhaps after all the public is right in so often preferring an author's first book.

There is what Emerson would have called a "central spontaneity" about the work of a young man that may give more delight to the reader than all the precision of thought and perfection of style for which we strive as life advances.
JOSHUA'S ROCK ON LAKE GEORGE, 1892.
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Since writing the passage in the text, I have met with the following in _The Speaker_, of London: "Everybody knows that when an important work is published in history, philosophy, or any branch of science, the editor of a respectable paper employs an expert to review it;.

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