Hitherto I have spoken chiefly of the books I have written for children, the design of which was as much to amuse as to instruct them. These comprise the entire series called Parley's Tales, with many others, bearing Parley's name. As to works for education--school-books, including readers, histories, geographies, &c., books for popular reading, and a wilderness of prose and poetry admitting of no classification--it is unnecessary to recount them. This is the closing chapter of my literary history, and I have little indeed to say, and that is a confession.
In looking at the long list of my publications, in reflecting upon the large numbers that have been sold, I feel far more of humiliation than of triumph. If I have sometimes taken to heart the soothing flatteries of the public, it has ever been speedily succeeded by the conviction that my life has been, on the whole, a series of mistakes, and especially in that portion of it which has been devoted to authorship. I have written too much, and have done nothing really well. I know, better than any one can tell me, that there is nothing in this long catalogue that will give me a permanent place in literature. A few things may struggle upon the surface for a time, but--like the last leaves of a tree in autumn, forced at length to quit their hold and drop into the stream--even these will disappear, and my name and all I have done will be forgotten.
A recent event, half-ludicrous and half-melancholy, has led me into this train of reflection. On going to Europe in 1851 I sent my books and papers to a friend, to be kept till my return. Among them was a large box of business documents--letters, accounts, receipts, bills paid, notes liquidated--comprising the transactions of several years, long since passed away. Shortly after my return to New York, in preparing to establish myself and family, I caused these things to be sent to me. On opening the particular box just mentioned, I found it a complete mass of shavings, shreds, fragments. My friend had put it carefully away in the upper loft of his barn, and there it became converted into a universal mouse-nest! The history of whole generations of the mischievous little rogues was still visible; beds, galleries, play-grounds, birth-places, and even graves, were in a state of excellent preservation. Several wasted and shrivelled forms of various sizes--the limbs curled up, the eyes extinct, the teeth disclosed, the long, slender tails straight and stiffened--testified to the joys and sorrows of the races that had flourished there.