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LITERATURE.
325

After my establishment in a school at Hartford, through the influence of Daniel Wadsworth, Esq., he and his lady, my lovely friend, requested a sight of my journals, which had been usually kept in sequestration. He made selections from their contents which he persuaded me were adapted to the public eye; and I adventured, under his guardianship, on what was in those times, and in our part of the country, a novel enterprise for a female.

1815

1. "Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse," was the modest title of my first volume, which comprised two hundred and sixty-seven pages. My kind patron, the first who ever gave encouragement to my literary tastes, and whose name I cannot utter without a thrill of gratitude, took upon himself the whole responsibility of contracting with publishers, gathering subscriptions, and even correcting the proof-sheets; and was delighted to present me, at last, a larger pecuniary amount than had been anticipated. Much favor was shown to this rather juvenile production; partly, perhaps, from courtesy to the sex, but principally that, though its literary pretensions might be slender, its moral and religious tone was accepted as a redeeming quality. Every agreeable concomitant seemed to add to the happiness of its disinterested prompter, Mr. Wadsworth, who delighted in drawing a solitary mind