THE MOUNTAIN. V 



ings of the author could not be otherwise, a feeble effort 

 withal, patched up from occasional scribblings of a trou- 

 bled man, a tired soldier in the agonizing life-fight, 

 or squeezed out of heart and brain in weary interludes 

 of the roar and shock of that same battle. 



When the rash promise was made to write a Mountain 

 book, the guardian angel of one soul was fast asleep ; and 

 when the greater part of the subscription list was made, 

 there was no book in existence. Then it was entirely 

 unknown what kind of book it would be, or, if it had 

 any existence, what sort of thing it was, and various 

 surmises were risked.* 



* These surmises, as might be expected, were of a diversified char- 

 acter and coloring, viz. : that it was a "Tragical Romance," a "Nar- 

 rative," a "Poem," a " Hoax," particularly a God knows what! It 

 was well known to all the friends of the author that years of "storm 

 and pressure" had passed over his head during his labors on the Alle- 

 ghany Mountain years of the most disastrous experiences bitter, 

 mournful, and pointing to the grave as the only relief; torments such 

 as men rarely suffer. At one time the active member of six firms, 

 all of which proved infirm, with results of woe and despair, whether 

 through Satan, .Fate, or Folly, it matters not, it was natural for 

 these friends to expect that something of the order of "Sorrows 

 of Werter," "Confessions of St. Augustine," possibly, "Living- 

 stone's Adventures in Africa," "Border Life, or Wild Sports of the 

 West," " Riley's Narrative," "Robinson Crusoe," " Sinbad the 

 Sailor," or "Romance of the Black Forest," would come off, surely 

 anything but a "Song to Joy." Think of a country doctor practicing 

 medicine in two firms, making fire-brick in one, sawing lumber in 

 another, cutting cross-ties for a railroad in another, selling drugs in 

 another, and speculating in mountain lands and building Health In- 

 stitutes on his own hook, all at one time! Old Father Adam had a good 

 Paradise of a farm, and was no doubt a good farmer. It was ex- 

 tremely foolish in him to try to get into other business, (endeavoring 

 to know more than he, ought to know,) and deliberately take the chances 

 of that tremendous Fall. No doubt he thought, like everybody else, 



"And set it down in his table of forces, 

 That any one man equals any four horses." 



Results were inevitable immeasurable sorrow. In the Prolegom- 

 enon some allusions are made to those days of wrath, experiences 

 infernal, things, persons, and consequents, which the friends will 

 understand, knowing all, but which to the stranger will be Greek 

 and darkness. The stranger will kindly pardon and pass all that he 

 does not understand in the category of local and personal allusions. 

 They were merely a sort of chimney, through which escaped the 

 smoke of the hell in which the unfortunate author was roasted, and 

 have no essential connection with the Song of the Mountain. They 

 legitimately belong, however, to the genesis of the book. 



1* 



