34 PIIOCEEDIXGS OF THE 



I was anxious to know if the fifty cents conformed to the law 

 at the time, and also whether there was any entry in the record 

 hook for April 26, 1849, that might have escaped notice. I there- 

 fore wrote to Dr. Putnam, who very kindly sent me the following 

 result of a renewed search made by the Register of Copyrights : — 



Fro7n the Register of OorvRiGiiTS, 

 Sept. 12, 1913. 

 To the Librarian of Congress, 



Referring to the inquiry from Prof. E. B. Poulton. 



Professor Poulton asks that the Copyright Offico record book for 

 the yenr 1849 be searched under the specific date April 26, for possible entry 

 of Mr. SIeepei"'s book. We have done so, but find no registrations at all on 

 April 26 of that year. As stated in my previous " JVleuiorandurn," we had 

 already examined the record book page by page for the year 1849 without 

 discovering any entry in regard to Mr. Sleeper's book. 



He also asks, in view of a notation in Mr. Sleepers Diary, what the legal 

 copyright fee was at that date, and whether the copyriglit could have been 

 registered before the book was published. 



The answer is that any registration in 1849 must have taken place under the 

 provisions of the Act of February 3, 1831, which provided in sec. 4 as follows 

 (in part): — 



"That no person shall be entitled to the benefit of this Act, unless he 

 shall, before jmblication, deposit a printed copy of the title of such book, 

 or books, map, chart, musical composition, print, cut, or engraving, in the 

 clerk's office of the district court of the district wherein the author or 

 l^roprietor shall reside, and the clerk of such coiu't is hereby directed and 

 required to record the same thereof forthwith, in a book to be kept for 

 that purpose .... For which record, the clerk shall be entitled to receive, 

 fi-om tjie person claiming such right as aforesaid, fifty cents .... And the 

 author or proprietor of any such book, map, (?hart, musical composition, 

 print, cut, or engraving, shall, within thrae mouths. U-oxn the publication 

 of said book, map, chart, musical composition, print, cut, or engraving, 

 deliver or cause to be delivered a copy of the same to the clerk of said 

 district. . . ." 



Respectfully, 



TlIORVALD SoT.BERG, 



Register of Copyrights. 



It is therefore clear that the date and fee of the copyright are 

 entered in accordance with the law existing at the time ; although, 

 in the absence of confirmation, they are valueless as evidence of 

 the publication in 1849. Sir George Warner, in fact, considered 

 that the diary does not support the genuineness of the pamphlet, 

 for he wrote, Sept. 6, 1913 : — 



I am not satisfied with the entry in the Diary, 18 Maj', and in.stead of 

 removing my suspicions it merely increases them. The ink in which it is 

 written looks as if it had been doctored to give it the appearance of age, and 

 neither this entry nor the others in which the same ink is used have quite the 

 character of C W. Sleeper's hand — they seem imitative rather than natural, 

 e. g. compare " Burrill," 20 May, with " Burrill," 1.5 March, and the entry on 

 22 May with the other " Nash " entries. The object of more forged entries 

 than one would of course be to make any peculiarity in the appearance of the 

 entry less marked. On the other hand, assuming all the rest of the entries to 

 have been Sleeper's, his hand certainly does vary to a certain extent, as every- 

 one's does when writing at different times and under different conditions. So 



