Excerpt from Prose Writings of Nathaniel Parker Willis Home J ournal. During all these years his pen was never idle, and he put forth volume after volume made up from his articles and correspondence in the columns of these periodi cals. A second and a third trip to Europe, visits to the South and West, to Washington, Cape Cod, Sharon Springs, and elsewhere, letters from Idlewild, his country-seat on the Hudson, studies of city-life, and miscellaneous papers of all kinds, furnished the contents of these books. They were good enough reading at the time, but altogether ephemeral, except now and then a poem or a short sketch which showed something of original inspiration, and rose above the general mediocrity of hack-work. More than half of the titles in this volume, and a great deal more than half of the amount of matter, have been taken from his three early books, Pencillings by the Way, Inklings of Adventure, and Letters from Under a Bridge. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.