Note 1 — Chapter I · 1806-1823. ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS.

This statement needs, however, some qualification. Mr. Clark, of Clark & Maynard, who publish Willis’s poems, tells me that there is a steady sale for these of about two hundred copies annually. Fifty years after date this is not bad. How many copies of Something and Other Poems, issued in 1884, will be asked for at the booksellers’ in the year of grace 1934? The copyright of most of Willis’s poems having lately expired, a cheap reprint of them has just been put forth, bearing date 1884 and forming No. 352 of “Lovell’s Library.” This seems to point to a continued popular demand. His prose writings are at present out of print. The fourth volume of Stories by American Authors contains his “Two Buckets in a Well,” and it is understood that the publishers of that series have in mind the publication of a volume of selections from Willis’s prose.