Fugitive Poetry

If, however, I can, by lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can, now and then, penetrate the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow beings and himself, surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain.
Washington Irving.
BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY PEIRCE AND WILLIAMS. 1829.

DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, to wit :
DISTRICT CLERK'S OFFICE.
Be it remembered, that on the eleventh day of September, A.D. 1829, in the fifty-fourth year of the Independence of the United States of America, Peirce and Williams, of the said district, have deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as proprietors in the words following, to wit :
Fugitive Poetry: By N.P. Willis.
'If, however, I can, by lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can, now and then, penetrate the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow beings, and himself, surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain.' Washington Irving.