It was a good time to open a portfolio.  But my old one had boyhood written on every page.  A single passionate outcry when the old warship I had read about in the broadsides that were a part of our kitchen literature, and in the “Naval Monument,” was threatened with demolition; a few verses suggested by the sight of old Major Melville in his cocked hat and breeches, were the best scraps that came out of that first Portfolio, which was soon closed that it should not interfere with the duties of a profession authorized to claim all the time and thought which would have been otherwise expended in filling it.

During a quarter of a century the first Portfolio remained closed for the greater part of the time.  Only now and then it would be taken up and opened, and something drawn from it for a special occasion, more particularly for the annual reunions of a certain class of which I was a member.

In the year 1857, towards its close, the “Atlantic Monthly,” which I had the honor of naming, was started by the enterprising firm of Phillips & Sampson, under the editorship of Mr. James Russell Lowell.  He thought that I might bring something out of my old Portfolio which would be not unacceptable in the new magazine.  I looked at the poor old receptacle, which, partly from use and partly from neglect, had lost its freshness, and seemed hardly presentable to the new company expected to welcome the new-comer in the literary world of Boston, the least provincial of American centres of learning and letters.  The gilded covering where the emblems of hope and aspiration had looked so bright had faded; not wholly, perhaps, but how was the gold become dim!—–­how was the most fine gold changed!  Long devotion to other pursuits had left little time for literature, and the waifs and strays gathered from the old Portfolio had done little more than keep alive the memory that such a source of supply was still in existence.  I looked at the old Portfolio, and said to myself, “Too late! too late.  This tarnished gold will never brighten, these battered covers will stand no more wear and tear; close them, and leave them to the spider and the book-worm.”

In the mean time the nebula of the first quarter of the century had condensed into the constellation of the middle of the same period.  When, a little while after the establishment of the new magazine, the “Saturday Club” gathered about the long table at “Parker’s,” such a representation of all that was best in American literature had never been collected within so small a compass.  Most of the Americans whom educated foreigners cared to see-leaving out of consideration official dignitaries, whose temporary importance makes them objects of curiosity—­were seated at that board.  But the club did not yet exist, and the “Atlantic Monthly” was an experiment.  There had already been several monthly periodicals, more or less successful and permanent, among which “Putnam’s Magazine” was conspicuous, owing its success largely to the