Under the study-window of his pleasant cottage at Winchester, in the long summer afternoons, little children often came to play. Never dreaming that their characteristic features were being sketched, or that the music of their voices was being echoed, in childish freedom they frolicked and chatted away the sunny hours; and when their remarks appeared peculiarly striking, their silent and unseen friend copied them word for word. With such wise, patient, and faithful effort, could one of such sound philosophy, and such cultivated power of clear and unaffected expression, fail to write a lifelike, salutary, and successful book?
And here again is suggested another lesson which Walter Aimwell would love to have his young readers learn from his life, as we know he endeavored to teach it in his writings. If one wishes to do anything good or sensible, he must have a definite purpose and work definitely for its accomplishment. Nobody carelessly blunders into writing a good book, nor into anything else of lasting value. Some young persons think a great deal of what is called genius. I have heard a great deal of talk about genius, as if it were something with which some persons are endowed, by means of which they were enabled, in some inexplicable manner, to do great deeds without thought or labor. I have known many different persons, and some whose performances very far excelled those of others in truthfulness and beauty of design and finish of workmanship; but I never had the fortune to see one of those human curiosities who succeed, as one may say, by accident, and without patience and effort. If a hearty love of truth, and a willingness patiently to work for it, is genius, no doubt Walter Aimwell had great genius; but so might have many a one who seems to be lying about the highways and byways of human society, apparently as useful as a loose pebble in the gutter.
At first, Walter Aimwell intended to call the proposed series by the name of the Right-Aim Stories; but he soon changed this title to the equally significant and more euphonious one of the “The Aimwell Stories.” His plan embraced twelve volumes, in each of which he intended to portray, with especial distinctness, some one character or peculiar species of influence, and in all of which instruction and amusement should be agreeably and inseparably united.
Although “Clinton” was the first written, the incidents of “Oscar” are supposed to occur previous to those of the former volume; so that, in the order of time, “Oscar” is the first of the series.
On Thursday, the second day of March, 1854, he came home at half-past two o’clock and wrote the first six pages of “Oscar.” The weekly paper of which he was general editor was published on Thursdays; and being more at leisure on the two following days than at any other time during the week, he wrote the principal portion of the “Aimwell Stories” on Fridays and Saturdays.
He formed distinct ideas not only of the characters of his young heroes and heroines, but also of their personal appearance. The date of the birth of each was carefully written in a little note-book which contained succinct accounts of their looks and moral and mental traits; and throughout that portion of the series which he lived to complete he continued to record the exact age of each, as well as the period at which each volume is supposed to commence and conclude. In this manner the stories became very real to him, every species of anachronism was avoided, and the characters and incidents seemed so lifelike to his readers that judicious critics were induced to believe that these books were in large part actual histories of what had transpired under the author’s observation.
Before “Oscar” was completed, that, with all other labors, was suspended by the appearance of that symptom, full of painful meaning, which had once before alarmed his friends. On the morning of the Fourth of July, after having spent a restless night in consequence of the unhappy fashion in which rude boys, and boys, too, who are not altogether rude, indulge during the night preceding our national holiday, he discovered the critical condition of his lungs. In this instance he was calm, as he always was; and the ordinary remedies finding aid in the steadiness of the patient, he soon recovered a degree of strength. Gradually he resumed his usual round of occupations, and “Oscar” was finished in season to be published on the 13th of December, 1854.
On the evening preceding the publication of “Oscar,” he began the third of “The Aimwell Series,” called “Ella,” which he succeeded in finishing before the end of the next May; and it was published in the latter part of August.