“Saturday. Saw Mr. N. again to-day about an organ for our church.... Have written up considerable matter ahead this week, and have also kept an account of the time spent in various duties during the week, with the view of systematizing my work. I find that I have spent seventeen hours in preparing editorial, twelve hours in examining exchanges, seven and a half in preparing news, four and a half in reading proof, and one in preparing outside copy. Deducting the extra editorial written, this would make a total of thirty-six hours, or six hours per day required by my editorial duties.”
See how his youthful habits of industry and systematic employment of time cling to him through all trials and changes.
One day in June he was much affected to find in his reading, in a letter from a missionary in Iowa, the following allusion to “The Sinner’s Friend,” the second book he had published:—
“The title of one of the invaluable works of this kind is ‘The Sinner’s Friend.’ I wish we had a few more copies of it. It does show the evils of sin as no other human publication does, according to my opinion. It leads a man to feel that he is a sinner, and that there is no help but in the merits of Christ. In fine, it humbles the creature, and exalts the Creator.”
This passage, perhaps, had its influence in determining him to finish “Thoughts for the Thoughtless,” a book commenced several years before. On the first day of November he offered the manuscript to the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, and on the twentieth of the same month he received a line from Mr. Dean, conveying “the welcome intelligence” that it was accepted, and would be published before the first of the coming year. A few days after, Rev. Mr. Bullard was in the office of the “Farmer,” and told him that those who had read the manuscript of his new book “spoke highly of it.”
On the fifth of December, in the forenoon, he read the proof of the fourth sheet of his new book; and learning from the printer that twelve more pages were needed to make a full form, he came home at noon, and had them fully completed before he retired for the night. On Christmas-day he went down to Charlestown to carry his mother a copy of his new book.
In February, he was pleased to learn that his new book was attracting considerable attention in his native city, although its authorship was unknown. “Nothing,” he says, “gives me greater satisfaction than to learn that I am exerting a good influence through the medium of my little books.”
A few days after “Thoughts for the Thoughtless” was published, he commenced writing another book for the young, entitled “The Boy’s own Guide.” As soon as this was completed, it was accepted by the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, and by them shortly afterwards published; so that on Christmas of this year, as at the same time in the year preceding, he had the pleasure of carrying to his mother a new book of his own writing.