Jerry; or, the sailor boy ashore

by Walter Aimwell

Soon he received from these gentlemen a letter, saying they had perused the manuscript, and were much pleased with it; but that it would make a book too small for their purposes. If he would add as much more, they would undertake its publication upon their usual terms.

He went home and immediately commenced complying with their suggestion. A plan for the extension of “Clinton” was laid out that very afternoon.

Other engagements interfering, he could not complete the book at once; but in the latter part of September he carried it to the publishers.

They seemed to be pleased not only with the book, but also with the man who wrote it; and they proposed plans and made offers which were quite tempting to him, and would have been accepted if his health had been as hardy as it once was.

“Clinton” was published on the day before Christmas, 1853. It hardly seems necessary to tell the readers of the “Aimwell Stories” how very fortunate “Clinton” was in pleasing the public.

It will be recollected that the scene of this book is laid in the State of Maine. On one of “Mitchell’s Pocket Maps” he has marked the very spot where the incidents of this interesting story are supposed to occur. It is on the eastern side of the central portion of the county of Franklin, near the head-waters of an unnamed branch of the Kennebec. On the map he used, there is no town located very near. Brookdale, no doubt, was a name of his own invention.

All the places and persons described existed in his mind with as much distinctness, apparently, as if the scenes had been long familiar to him, and the persons were those with whom he was intimately acquainted. To the only friend with whom he freely conversed upon the subject, he always spoke of them as really existing. Yet he never was very near the locality selected for his story, nor is it known that a single character was taken from among his acquaintances. He often expressed a determination to visit, at some favorable opportunity in the future, this part of Maine, that he might compare plain, unvarnished fact with fancy, which, indeed, was equally plain and unvarnished.

The welcome that “Clinton” received from the public was the crowning pleasure and success of the year 1853, which was, throughout, a year of prosperity to Walter Aimwell. There was no return of the hemorrhage of the lungs, and his general health appeared good. The condition of his pecuniary affairs was improving, and to whatever he put his pen, it prospered.

Of course, the praise which “Clinton” received from youthful readers and from critics of high standing had not the effect to dampen the ardor of Walter Aimwell’s interest in the young. In considering the amount and condition of juvenile literature, he was persuaded that authors had neglected the young far more than any other class in the community; and that there was really a deficiency of books calculated to be of use to them in the development of mind, and, above all, in the formation of good character. As does every other person sufficiently desirous of the improvement of society to think much about the means of accomplishing it, he believed that the best and most effectual method lay in the right training of the young. He could not conceal from himself the fact that his pen was capable of achieving much in this useful and somewhat neglected department of human labor. It was something he could undertake without fear of failing in his duty in regard to engagements already formed. For some time he silently revolved these facts in his own mind, and by and by he consulted his publishers upon the expediency of writing a series of books for the young, of which “Clinton” should be one. These gentlemen were pleased with his plans, and agreed to publish the series.

If Walter Aimwell had undertaken to write the actual history of a State, I do not know that he could have taken more pains to ascertain the essential truth. He made boyhood a serious study. Whenever in his reading he met any fact directly or remotely bearing upon the subject, he carefully noted it. Such facts casually came to his attention in the many newspapers and other periodicals which, as editor of the New England Farmer, it was his duty to read. Besides this, he seems to have searched biographies and histories for accounts of the childhood and youth of all persons in any way distinguished.