On this sea of miscellany I was allured to embark, and, having set sail, there was no return. I think now with amazement, and almost incredulity, of the number of articles I was induced by the urgency of editors to furnish. Before I ceased to keep a regular catalogue, they had amounted to more than two thousand. Some of these were afterwards comprehended in selections, though enough for several volumes must still be floating about, like sea-weed among the noteless billows. They were divided among nearly three hundred different publications, from the aristocratic "Keepsake" of the Countess of Blessington, and the classic "Athenæum" and "Forget-Me-Not" of London, to the "Coachmakers' Magazine," the "Herald of the Upper Mississippi," the "Buckeye Blossom" of the West, and the "Rose-Bud" of the factory girls at Lowell. Promptitude was the life-blood of these contributions. Hungering presses must be fed, and not wait. How to obtain time to appease editorial appetites, and not neglect my housekeeping tactics, was a study. I found the employment of knitting congenial to the contemplation and treatment of the slight themes that were desired, and, while completing fifteen or sometimes twenty pairs of stockings yearly for our large family, or for the poor, stopped the needles to arrest the wings of a flying thought or a flowing stanza. Still, I always corrected, and rewrote more than once, these extempora-
