OF AMERICAN LIFE; BY AMERICAN WRITERS. EDITED BY MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. IN THREE VOLS. VOL. I. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1830. M69 PREFACE. THERE are few things that give a completer picture of the habits of living, and the ways of thinking of a foreign country, than its lighter literature; which, composed with a view to domestic circulation, often displays unconsciously the nicest shades of national manners, and the broadest contrasts of national character. In this branch of knowledge the Americans have hitherto had greatly the advantage of us; for whilst they pay us the compliment (and it is a compliment) of reprinting our popular produc441566 tions almost as soon as they appear, our acquaintance, with their lighter works has hitherto been confined to the whimsical pages of Salmagundi, the powerful though morbid rhapsodies of Brockden Brown, the moral tales of Miss Sedgwick, and the splendid novels of Mr. Cooper. With Mr. Washington Irving, indeed, we are sufficiently familiar; but, in spite of a few inimitable sketches of New York in its Dutch estate, his writings are essentially European, and must be content to take their station amongst the Spectators and Tatlers of the mother country. To remedy this deficiency in our own literature, by presenting to the English public some specimens of the shorter American Stories, is the intention of the following work. The selection has been made partly from detached tales, but principally from a great mass of Annuals, Magazinės, and other periodicals, embracing many of the most popular productions of the most popular living writers of the western world. Amongst these I am chiefly indebted to Messrs. Verplank, Paulding, Hall, Neal, Barker, Willis, and Stone, and though last, far from least, to Miss Sedgwick: some of the pieces are altogether anonymous, and of some the signature is evidently fictitious. The scenes described, and the personages introduced in these volumes, are as various as the authors, extending in geographical space from Canada to Mexico, and including almost every degree of civilization, from the wild Indian and the almost equally wild hunter of the forests and prairies, to the cultivated inhabitant of the city and the plain; from OtterBag and Pete Featherton, down to the fine lady in the Country Cousin, and Monsieur de Viellecour, most courtly of refugees. In fixing on the different pieces, my principal aim has been to keep the book as national and characteristic as possible. Many a clever essay have I rejected, because it might have been written on this side of the Atlantic; and many a graceful tale has been thrown aside for no graver fault, than that, with an assortment of new names, it might have belonged to France, or Switzerland, |