DEAR SIR: Herewith please find our bill for printing and binding Profitable Tales and Western Verse.
We shall send the two copies of each volume (unnumbered) to secure the copyright, and when the certificate is received, will send it to you. These copies are over and above the 250 copies sent to you.
Regretting the delay incident to the bringing out of two such volumes, and hoping that the author and his friends may be gratified and pleased with their mechanical execution, we are,
Respectfully yours,
JOHN WILSON & SON.
It is needless to say that both the author and his friends were gratified and pleased with the mechanical execution of the "Little Books," while Field's admirers have never wearied in their admiration of their contents. Every cent of the fund subscribed for these books went to pay for their printing; and as Field started for Europe before they were received from Cambridge, the task of numbering them, as well as the cost of forwarding them to subscribers, fell to my lot.
These two books contained not only the best of what Field had written up to that time, but their contents were selected with such care that they continue to represent the best he ever wrote. Much that he rejected at that time went to make up subsequent volumes of his works. The popular editions from the subscription plates of "A Little Book of Western Verse" and "A Little Book of Profitable Tales" had a phenomenal sale, and made a handsome return in royalties to him who sent them forth with the words:
"Go, little book; and if any one would speak thee ill, let him bethink him that thou art the child of one who loves thee well."
CHAPTER VI