“City of Mexico,
“January 20th, 1848.
“Can I expect that my silence for several years will be pardoned? When I last wrote you I made a determination that our correspondence, on my side at least, should cease until I had made myself worthy of continuing that correspondence. Since then circumstances have enabled me to take rank among men—to prove myself not unworthy of that gentle blood from which I am sprung. Oh, how my heart beats at the renewal of those tender ties—paternal, fraternal, filial affection; those golden chains of the heart so long, so sadly broken.
“If I mistake not, my last letter to you was written in the city of Pittsburgh. I was then on my way from the West to the cities of the Atlantic. Shortly after I reached Philadelphia, where for a while my wild wanderings ceased. In this city I devoted myself to literature, and for a period of two or three years earned a scanty but honourable subsistence with my pen. My genius, unfortunately for my purse, was not of that marketable class which prostitutes itself to the low literature of the day. My love for tame literature enabled me to remain poor—ay, even obscure, if you will—though I have the consolation of knowing that there are understandings, and those, too, of a high order, who believe that my capabilities in this field are not surpassed, if equalled, by any writer on this continent. This is the under-current of feeling regarding me in the United States; the current, I am happy to say, that runs in the minds of the educated and intelligent. Perhaps in some future day this under-current may break through the surface, and shine the brighter for having been so long concealed.
“But I have now neither time nor space for theories. Facts will please you better, my dear father and best friend. During my trials as a writer, my almost anonymous productions occasionally called forth warm eulogies from the press. A little gold rubbed into the palm of an editor would have made them wonders! During this time I made many friends, but none of that class who were able and willing to lift me from the sink of poverty.
“There are no Maecenases in the United States. I found none to forge golden wings for me, that I might fly to the heights of Parnassus. During this probation I frequently sent you papers and magazines, containing my productions, generally, I believe, under the nom de plume of ‘The Poor Scholar.’ Have these missiles ever reached you? As I have said, for three or four years I struggled on through this life of literature, and amid the charlatanism and quackery of the age I found I must descend to the everyday nothings of the daily press. I edited, corresponded, became disgusted. The war broke out with Mexico. I flung down the pen and took up the sword. I entered the regiment of New York Volunteers as a 2nd lieutenant, and sailing—”
The letter is torn here, and the remaining portion has unfortunately been lost. The regiment in which Mayne Reid obtained a commission was the 1st New York Volunteers, the first regiment raised in New York for the Mexican War, and of which Ward B. Burnett was colonel. Mayne Reid sailed with his regiment in December, 1846, for Vera Cruz.