After a brief struggle, and the establishment of another retail store in Calvert Street, which I took charge of, with what there was left of the Charleston adventure, we failed outright, and all this within six or eight months after we had called our creditors together and obtained an extension of twelve months and testimonials in our favor of the most gratifying character, and within little more than a year after leaving Boston.

And then, for want of anything better to do, I began writing for the papers, for the “Portico,” and at last for the public, as an editor and as an author, mainly at the instigation of Mr. Pierpont, for whom I wrote both “Niagara"[1] and “Guldau,” and a part of “Allen’s” American Revolution, studying law, and languages by the half-dozen at the same time, and laboring upon the average about sixteen hours a day, while Mr. Pierpont struck out boldly for a far-off perilous and rocky shore, with a lighthouse, in the shape of a pulpit, before him, and achieved the “Airs of Palestine” while undergoing the process of regeneration, and starving by inches upon what there were left of his wife’s teaspoons, which were sold one by one to pay the rent of a cheap room in Howard Street.  So poor indeed were we at one time, that we could hardly muster enough between us to pay our bootblack.

I have already said that Mr. Pierpont had no aptitude for extemporaneous speaking; and what was even worse, he had no hope of being able to overcome the difficulty.  Once, and once only, did I ever hear him try his hand in that way, until many years after he had entered upon the ministry.  A club had been organized among us for literary purposes.  We were both members, and he the Vice-President.  We called ourselves the Delphians, and passed among our contemporaries for the male Muses, our number being limited to nine,—­not seven, as I see it stated in the Boston Advertiser, on the authority of our friend Paul Allen.  The rest of the story is near enough to the truth, although the verses therein mentioned were written by Mr. Pierpont as a volunteer offering, after the Della-Cruscan school, or manner of “Laura Matilda,” and not upon the spur of the occasion, as there related, nor as a trial of wit; and the last line should be, “Pulls where’er the zephyr roves”—­not, as given there, “Pulls where’er the zephyr moves.”

It was in this club that Mr. Pierpont first tried himself—­and the brethren—­with extemporaneous speaking.  It was a pitiable failure, worse if possible than my own, and I never made another attempt.  Even General Winder, who was a fine advocate, and a capital speaker before a jury, boggled wretchedly before the club, and our President, Watkins, who was said to be exceedingly eloquent before the great Masonic lodges, where he occupied the highest position, could not be persuaded to open his mouth, and all the rest of the brethren were mutes.  True, it was like apostrophizing your own grandmother, in