In those days every young lady was supposed to have an "album," and a relative who was visiting the family quickly transferred the verses to hers. They were first published, much to the surprise of the author, in a newspaper printed in Troy. They attracted immediate attention, and were copied and recopied in newspapers and periodicals all over the country. An illustrated edition, in book form, was published about 1850, and since then School Readers have made them familiar to generation after generation of children. They have been translated into foreign languages, and a learned editor informed us of his delight and surprise when travelling in Germany to hear them recited by a little girl in her own native tongue.
After a long life of honor and usefulness, Dr. Moore died, at his summer residence in New York, July 10, 1863. For him may be claimed the peculiar distinction of being the author of the two extremes of literature—learned works on ancient languages for profound scholars, and Christmas verses for little children. The learned works, upon which he spent years of constant labor, have been superseded by works of still greater research, but the man is yet to be born who can write anything to supersede the little poem that has made Santa Claus and his tiny reindeer a living reality to thousands of children throughout our broad land.
REDUCED FAC-SIMILE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF DR. MOORE'S FAMOUS POEM.
[THE WORD OF THE GUNS.]
BY EARLE TRACY.
The little Mystery was lying off the pier at Martinez's. Night had covered sail-boat and row-boat alike, and while all Potosi gathered towards the front celebrating Christmas eve with the rockets and the fire-crackers that are not once thought of on the Fourth of July, Mr. Martinez and Bascom were silently carrying bags of gold on board the Mystery. As the sails ran up in the snapping cold, the mournful cry of her ropes was the only sound on the Back Bay, and it smote Bascom; and Mr. Martinez's grasp and his whispered cautions to Captain Tony, and the solemn gold that he had carried, weighed upon his heart as they put out.
Everything had been arranged on the deck for mounting the one which was best preserved of the six mysterious old cannon that he had found the summer before sunk in Potomoc Bay. It had been left covered by tarpaulins in a row-boat off Captain Tony's point, where they could get it as they passed. They ran the schooner across from Mr. Martinez's to the point, and neither of them spoke along the way. When they reached the boat, Bascom sprang over into it and lifted off the tarpaulins. There was nothing underneath.