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What puzzles me about the Young Folks' history is that work which so often (certainly) dragged in the writing should be found so universally attractive in the reading . . . .
I was in Boston on Wednesday (a few weeks after the publication) and found the 9th thousand of the history then in press—about 6000 of these sold and ordered, and constant demand.
They feel very confident of a continued sale, by all the signs.
I am now making some farther alterations for a new edition.
The publishers wish me to make a manual of Universal History now—pleasant offer!
I think I have now for the first time accepted the fact that I have achieved a worldly success at last and may really have those additional few hundred dollars a year that would seem wealth to me. Perhaps even this year I may. . . . It does not excite me, but I confess to agreeable sensations.
A month later the diary records:—
A memorable day. In the morning I had a note telling that Mr. Shepard expected to sell 40,000 of the Young Folks' History this year and 200,000 in all. . . . Then at evening came the kindest letter from Mr. Emerson saying that he was “sufficiently repaid” for the money advanced on the book, and should not take it back.
This munificence gives me $1000 additional in August—probably $2000 in all. For the first time, I think, I begin really to believe that I am to have some money to spend—after fifty years of care and economy.
This economy I have never really disliked, indeed have found a certain
