After an absence of six months I returned to Boston, and, by the advice of my physician, took up my residence in the country. I built a house at Jamaica Plain, four miles from the city, and here I continued for more than twenty years. My health was partially restored, and I resumed my literary labors, which I continued steadily, from 1833 to 1850, with a few episodes of lecturing and legislating, three voyages to Europe, and an extensive tour to the South. It would be tedious and unprofitable, were I even to enumerate my various works, produced from the beginning to the present time. I may sum up the whole in a single sentence: I am the author and editor of about one hundred and seventy volumes, and of these seven millions have been sold!
I have said, that however the authorship of Parley's Tales has made me many friends, it has also subjected me to many annoyances. When I was in London, in 1832, I learned that Mr. Tegg, a prominent publisher there, had commenced the republication of Parley's Tales. I called upon him, and found that he had one of them actually in the press. The result of our interview was a contract, in which I engaged to prepare several of these works, which he agreed to publish, allowing me a small consideration. Four of these works I prepared on the spot, and after my return to America prepared and forwarded ten others. Some time after, I learned that the books, or at least a portion of them, had been published in London, and were very successful. I wrote several letters to Mr. Tegg on the subject, but could get no reply.
Ten years passed away, and being in pressing need of all that I might fairly claim as my due, I went to London, and asked him to render me an account of his proceedings under the contract. I had previously learned, on inquiry, that he had indeed published four or five of the works, as we had agreed, but, taking advantage of these, which passed readily into extensive circulation, he proceed to set aside the contract, and to get up a series of publications upon the model of those I had prepared for him, giving them in the title-pages the name of Parley, and passing them off, by every artifice in his power, as the genuine works of that author. He had thus published over a dozen volumes, which he was circulating as Peter Parley's Library. The speculation, as I was told, had succeeded admirably; and I was assured that many thousand pounds of profit had been realized thereby.
To my request for an account of his stewardship the publisher replied, in general terms, that I was misinformed as to the success of the works in question; that, in fact, they had been a very indifferent speculation; that he found the original works were not adapted to his purpose, and he had consequently got up others; that he had created, by advertising and other means, an interest in these works, and had thus greatly benefited the name and fame of Parley; and, all things considered, he thought he had done more for me than I had for him: therefore, in his view, if we considered the account balanced, we should not be very far from a fair adjustment.
To this answer I made a suitable reply, but without obtaining the slightest satisfaction. The contract I had made was a hasty memorandum, and judicially, perhaps, of no binding effect on him. And besides, I had no money to expend in litigation. A little reflection satisfied me that I was totally at his mercy: a fact of which his calm and collected manner assured me he was even more conscious than myself. The discussion was not prolonged. At the second interview he cut the whole matter short, by saying,—"Sir, I do not owe you a farthing: neither justice nor law requires me to pay you anything. Still, I am an old man, and have seen a good deal of life, and have learned to consider the feelings of others as well as my own. I will pay you four hundred pounds, and we will be quits! If we cannot do this, we can do nothing." In view of the whole case, this was as much as I expected, and so I accepted the proposition. I earnestly remonstrated with him against the enormity of making me responsible for works I never wrote, but as to all actual claims on the ground of the contract I gave him a receipt in full, and we parted.
It is not to be supposed that the annoyances arising from the falsification of the name of Parley, which I have just pointed out, have been the only obstacles which have roughened the current of my literary life. Not only the faults and imperfections of execution in my juvenile works—and no one knows them so well as myself—have been urged against them, but the whole theory on which they are founded has been often and elaborately impugned.
It is quite true, that when I wrote the first half-dozen of Parley's Tales I had formed no philosophy upon the subject: I simply used my experience with children in addressing them. I followed no models, I put on no harness of the schools, I pored over no learned examples. I imagined myself on the floor with a group of boys and girls, and I wrote to them as I would have spoken to them. At a later period I had reflected on the subject, and embodied in a few simple lines the leading principle of what seemed to me the true art of teaching children,—and that is, to consider that their first ideas are simple and single, and formed of images of things palpable to the senses; and hence that these images are to form the staple of lessons to be communicated to them.
THE TEACHER'S LESSON.
I saw a child, some four years old,
Along a meadow stray;
Alone she went, uncheck'd, untold,
Her home not far away.
She gazed around on earth and sky,
Now paused, and now proceeded;
Hill, valley, wood, she passed them by
Unmarked, perchance unheeded.