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To describe minutely the trials, sufferings, and disappointments of the whole year, would take too much time and space. The subsequent returns of my collector were about on a par with the first. Finding it impossible to pay the printer and paper maker, as promised, out of the advance subscriptions falling due at the end of three months, I borrowed from some of my friends about four hundred dollars, and paid it over, stating, when I did so, that I must have a new contract, based upon a six months’ credit.

I found no great difficulty in obtaining this from the paper maker, to whom I spoke in confident terms of my certain ultimate success. The printer required half cash, which I agreed to pay.

This arrangement I fondly hoped would give me time to make my collections, and, besides paying off the debt already accumulated, enable me to acquire a surplus to meet the notes given, from time to time, for paper and printing.

At the end of a year, my list, through various exertions and sacrifices, had arisen to twelve hundred. On this I had collected eight hundred dollars, and I calculated that there were about sixteen hundred dollars due me, which, I thought, if all collected in, would about square me up with the world. This I thought. But, when I came to go over my bill-book and ledger, I found, to my utter dismay, that I owed three thousand five hundred dollars! This must be a mistake, I said, and went over my books again. The result was as at first. I owed the money, and no mistake. But how it was, I could not for some time comprehend. But a series of memorandums from my cash-book, and an examination of printers’ and paper makers’ bills, at length made all clear. I had used, on my own personal account, four hundred dollars during the year. Office rent was two hundred and fifty. My carriers had cost over a hundred dollars. My boy one hundred and fifty, and ninety had been paid to the clerk during the first three months. Sundry little items of expense during the year made an aggregate of over a hundred. Paper and printing for the first three months had been nearly a thousand dollars, and for the last three quarters about twenty-two hundred dollars.

To go on with this odds against me, I had sense enough to see was perfect folly. But, how could I stop? I was not worth a dollar in the world; and the thought of wronging those who had trusted me in full reliance upon my integrity, produced a feeling of suffocation. Besides, I had worked for a year as few men work. From sunrise until twelve, one, and two o’clock, I was engaged in the business or editorial duties appertaining to my enterprise, and to abandon all after such a struggle was disheartening.

After much deliberation, I concluded that the best thing I could do was to sell out my list of subscribers to another and more successful establishment in the city, and, for this purpose, waited upon the publisher. He heard me, and after I had finished, asked my terms. I told him fifteen hundred dollars for the list. He smiled, and said he wouldn’t give me five hundred for the whole concern, debts and all. I got up, put on my hat, and left him with indignant silence.

To go on was the worst horn for me to grasp in the dilemma in which I found myself. To stop, would be to do so with some three or four hundred persons paid in advance, for portions of a year. I was dunned, daily, by my printer, for money, and in order to meet the notes which had already fallen due, I had been compelled to borrow temporarily from my friends. Unable to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion, in despair, I summoned creditors and friends around me, and laid before them a full statement of my condition. There were some long faces at that meeting; but no one felt as I did. I shall never forget the suffering and mortification of that day, were I to live a thousand years.