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It is with a certain misgiving and want of cardinal
faith in mail-bags, that I sit down to my purple, velvettopped
writing-desk and take up my jeweled gold pen
(a New Year's gift from the colonel) to commence burnishing
up a “Needle” for you. One paper of six
shining needles, sharp as thorns—I mean the thorns
that guard rose-buds—I sent to you last May, nicely
sealed, and addressed to you in a plain, fair hand, that
could not be mistaken for any thing else.

I placed the package carefully in the hands of the
village post-master of the rural town near which I was
then visiting, in Mississippi. I was on horseback, and
riding up to the door with the parcel in my hand, I
placed it in his possession, saying, “Parson,” (for he is
an ex-Methodist preacher, with gray locks, and a venerable,
General Jackson-like aspect, with his wiry hair
brushed hard back from his knotty forehead,) “my dear,
good parson,” said I, in my most entreating tones, “I
entrust to you this little package, to go by mail to Philadelphia.
I wish you would see that it is certainly
mailed.”

“Yes, Miss, it shall go to-night. Is there any money
in it?” he asked, looking at its four corners, peering at
the seal, and balancing it on his two fingers, as if to test
its avoirdupois.

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“They are needles,” I said, smiling, “and they mustn't
get wet.”

“Needles! Miss, then; I'm 'fraid its hardly mailable
matter,” and he held the parcel more lightly in his grasp,
as if he were apprehensive of pricking his fingers, should
any of the sharp points penetrate the paper.

“Weigh it, sir, and charge postage accordingly: it
will be paid in Philadelphia,” I answered; and receiving
a renewed promise from the snowy-headed old postmaster,
who is known by no other title or name than “Parson,”
in all the town, I rode away at full canter, to rejoin
Isabel and the handsome young planter, Edward, who
were slowly walking their horses along the green path
that wound by the brook which flowed past the village.

This package you received in due time, just as you
were on the eve of departure for Europe, Mr. —, as
I learn from a letter, and after your departure it appears
to have vanished. Doubtless, in their humility, they
modestly withdrew themselves into some obscure corner
of your domicilium, to give way to the glittering silver
needles with which you were about to favor your readers
from the lands of the rising sun over the blue water.
This is the true secret of their invisibility, and I have
no doubt, that by a diligent search beneath the bundles
and packages of old MSS., which fill the corners and
crevices of your editorial room, the missing, modest,
retiring, eclipsed needles will be brought to light.

But, I fear, so long a burial in obscurity will have
rusted them and rendered them unfit for use; so, whether
found or lost, they are to be regarded among the
things “that were.”

Not seeing any of them make their appearance in your

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columns, which shone steadily with the lustre of your
own lively epistles, I came to the conclusion that they
had been disgraced—had been quietly sent to that bourne
of all rejected communications—“the tomb of the Capulets.”

“Requiescat in pace,” I sighed, as I thought of the
parcel, and submissively bowed to your better judgment.
I heard of its loss in this way. A letter from your editor
pro-tem, asking me for more letters, came acquainting
me with the fact of the “mysterious disappearance”
of the six I had sent. Upon reading this, I remained a
moment quite stupefied. If a poor hen had seen a
wicked hawk at one swoop dart into the height of the
clouds with six of her little, golden-colored chickens in
his talons, and disappear with them forever from sight,
she could not have been more confounded than I was at
this intelligence of the disappearance of my six epistles.
At length a heavy sigh relieved my heart; and half a
dozen tears (one for each needle) fell pattering upon the
letter I was reading. I could not help weeping, I was
vexed, and angry, and grievously sorry. I thought of
all the thoughts which I had drawn from my heart, or
kindled at my brain, interwoven in their lines! It was
as if they, like Noah's dove, had gone forth from the
ark of my mind, seeking rest in other hearts and minds,
(those of your dear readers, my many friends, for whom
I wrote them all in sweet, though unseen, communion
with them,) and were driven back, ruffled, wing-wounded,
to rest in my own soul again—the ark from which they
so hopefully went forth!

None but an author can sympathize with me. None
but the author who writes—coining his heart as he writes

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—who writes with all his intellectuality active—and with
large love for all those unknown ones, the good, and wise,
and beautiful, for whom he writes—and whom, as his
pen flows over the spotless page, he sees a noble and appreciating
audience assembled before him—none but an
author who writes thus can feel all I felt. To such
among your readers, those dear friends, whom having
not seen I love, I look for that sympathy which can only
atone for the loss of so much of myself, which I had
poured out from the full fountain of my being into theirs—
at least, which I believed I was pouring into theirs,
but which has only been poured out upon the earth and
air.

It is true, the lost MS. was but sixty pages of letter
paper; but it is not the abundance, but that it is ourself,
a part of ourself that is gone, that makes the loss. One
would grieve for a finger amputated, as well as for an
arm. Until now, I knew not the maternal love which
an authoress cherishes for her literary offspring. Perhaps,
if I am to be an author, it was best I should pass
through all an author's phases, and experience all an
author's experiences. I therefore made up my mind
patiently to endure the loss; but I felt like a blind
orator, who has been eloquently and touchingly addressing
for an hour a large audience supposed to be before
him, when he is afterwards told that he had been cruelly
deceived, and had been pouring out his heart, soul, and
spirit to empty seats—to an unpeopled void!

The end of a writer is the mind of the reader; and
while writing, in imagination beholding his readers,
reading his thoughts and lines of fire and love, he has
his reward, though he never sees to his dying day one

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of them. But when he is told that his thoughts reached
no living mind, that they were addressed to a peopleless
void—by the destruction of his MS., before it reaches
the press,—he feels an aching void—a tumultuous backward
ebb into his soul of all that had gone forth, coming
like an overwhelming torrent, at first to prostrate with
despair; but not finally destroy his energies. If he possesses
true genius, he will rally, and he will try once
more; but he can never again put forth the same
thoughts. Their freshness is gone, their force lamed,
their beauty impaired by repetition. He will seek a
new field, and what is lost, is lost irrevocably. Such is
the nature of that sort of genius of which authors are
made, Mr. —, and such is authorship in one of its
phases.

Well, I went to work again, but I did not, oh, I could
not write over the same letters, and so I let them go,
and resumed where the last of the missing ones had
ended. The six lost, described our voyage down the
Cumberland from Nashville; adventures on the Ohio;
scenes and incidents upon the Mississippi; life on the
river; habits of the boatmen; wooding by torchlight; a
tornado; a collision; a shipwrecked steamer; an earthquake;
the city of Memphis; its population, habits, and
manners; the city of Vicksburg; the city of Natchez,
and many things too numerous to mention. Dear me!
what a loss! And this is not all. Another package of
a new series is gone.

The seventh letter of the new series was dated at a
plantation near Natchez, where I was sojourning a few
weeks. It, and five more, described society in the country,
in the town; deer hunting, fox hunting; a visit to

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an Indian village and temple; a love scene; a confession;
a wounded cavalier; a journey to the prairie; an Indian
maid, and an adventure replete with romance. The
twelfth letter closed as we were in the prairies encamped,
and written while the gentlemen of our party were dressing
a deer for dinner. These letters were put into the
mail in two parcels at the next post-office.

The postmaster was a young man with a savage mustache,
a black, stiletto-like eye, and he kept his office in
a log-cabin that was half-grocery. He was terrifically
polite, and as he extended his hand to take the parcels,
he betrayed the butt of a bowie-knife in his gaping vest.
He said the stage would pass in a few minutes, and indeed,
I saw it come up, a sort of dry-goods box on two
wheels, driven by a yellow-faced youth of seventeen, his
forehead and eyes buried in a monstrous buffalo-cap, as
large as a huzzar's, while his feet were bare, and over
his shoulders he wore a green blanket with a hole in the
centre, through which he had thrust his head. In this
box was a leathern mail-bag, into which I did see my
parcel safely deposited and locked up, the postmaster
with the mustache returning the key to his own pocket.
They were the only letters that went that day; and now
after four months you have received neither, Mr. —.
It is a shame, and enough to try the patience of any
body to be so peculiarly unfortunate. I suppose they
have added ere this fuel to the flames of the hecatomb
of wandering epistles that monthly blazes in the courtyard
of the General Post-office, at Washington. It is
said they save only letters with money! Ah, young
gentlemen, or you good gentlemen with gray hair, who
superintend this dreadful fire which destroys so much

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that sprung from immortal minds and loving hearts, if
you had known the value of my two parcels, which,
doubtless, passed through your hands, you would have
had mercy upon them; I feel that you would have spared
them from the flames, and sent them safely to Mr. —;
and if this should be so unfortunate as to fall into your
power, O grand Inquisitor of the Dread Inquisition of
Letters, called dead, yet being filled with thoughts, can
never die—spare, oh spare this, my poor epistle,* and
all others that come after it, and send it on its way rejoicing,
and, as in duty bound, I ever will pray for your
happiness, health, and peace forevermore.

p613-288

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