It was in this year that Mr. Taylor prepared, and Mr. Putnam published, his surprisingly attractive volume, entitled “Views Afoot.” With such Quaker-like simplicity was it written, and such a noble spirit of poetry pervaded the descriptions of scenery, men, and art, that it leaped into popular favor on the prestige of its advance sheets. Its success was a forcible example of the winning power of simple truth. Its interest will never abate, because he did not assume the pompous airs of an infallible critic, but rather chose to pretend to nothing but describe what he saw as it appeared to him.
The success of that book introduced him at once into the literary circles of New York, where, with the friendship of Mr. Willis, Mr. Parke Godwin, Mr. Horace Greeley, Mr. William Cullen Bryant, and many others, well known as men of the highest culture, he received a most cordial welcome. He was at once secured by the management of the “Literary World,” a periodical issued weekly in New York, and which, from 1847 to 1853, held the highest place in literary criticism and classical composition gained by any American magazine or paper of that period.
When he sought employment on the New York “Tribune,” in 1848, a place was readily found for him, and he began, by the contribution of small articles, his long and honorable career as one of the editors of that influential journal.
In the spring of 1849, Mr. Greeley suggested to Mr. Taylor the importance of having some trustworthy information from the gold regions of California, about which there was then so much excitement. The people read, with the greatest avidity, every scrap of news or gossip from the gold-fields, and thousands were on their way by steam and by overland mule-trains to seek their fortunes in that Eldorado. At no period of our nation’s history, not excepting the agitation at the beginning of great wars, have the people of this country exhibited such uncontrollable excitement as they displayed at that time.
The rich sold their property to the first bidder, and took the first conveyance; while the poor started on foot, with nothing to preserve them from the starvation which followed in the desert. For a time it appeared as if New England and the Middle States would be left without sufficient male population to carry on the routine of official duty.