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THE

LITERARY REMAINS

OF THE LATE

WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK.

INCLUDING

THE OLLAPODIANA PAPERS,

THE

SPIRIT OF LIFE,

AND A SELECTION FROM HIS

VARIOUS PROSE AND POETICAL WRITINGS.

EDITED BY

LEWIS GAYLORD CLARK.

NEW-YORK:

BURGESS, STRINGER, & CO.,

222 BROADWAY, CORNER OF ANN STREET.

1844.

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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844,

BY LEWIS GAYLORD CLARK,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.

STEREOTYPED BY REDFIELD & SAVAGE,

13 CHAMBERS STREET, N. Y.

ΤΟ

DAVID GRAHAM, Esq.,

OF NEW-YORK,

As a Testimonial

OF

CORDIAL REGARD AND ESTEEM,

THE ENSUING PAGES

FROM THE PEN OF HIS LIFE-LONG FRIEND AND ADMIRER,

ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY

THE EDITOR.

MEMOIR

OF

WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK.

Ir was my purpose, in introducing the ensuing pages to the public, to have accompanied them with a more elaborate Memoir of the life of their author than had hitherto appeared; the chief additional attraction of which, however, I had hoped to present in extracts from his familiar correspondence. I say 'chief attraction,' because in the able Memoir from the pen of his eminent friend, Hon. Judge CONRAD, of Philadelphia, published in 'GRAHAM'S Magazine' for 1840, and in the excellent and authentic sketch which prefaces the selections from his verse in Mr. GRISWOLD'S 'Poets and Poetry of America'―of the former of which the Departed often expressed his approbation-all that is essential for the information of the reader was felicitously and succinctly embodied. But, as I have said, something more than this I had contemplated; something which, under his own hand, and in the easy play of unstudied correspondence with his most intimate friend on earth, should be an exponent of his 'inner life,' his every-day thoughts, impulses, and affections. Why I have not been able to do this, I shall now briefly explain.

For many many months previous to the death of my twin-brother, that event was constantly in my mind, and tinged the whole current of my thoughts. Each sun that rose and set upon us, I counted toward his last resting-place;' and the slow-swinging pendulum of a clock, accidentally encountered, appeared to me to have but one purpose; it was notching his resistless progress to an early grave. When the last bitter hour came; when all that was mortal of my 'severed half' had ceased to live; nothing it seemed could add to the poignant sense of present bereavement. I was told indeed that Time, the great Healer, would soften the bitterness of my regret; that even the memory of a past sorrow might yet become 'pleasant, though mournful to the soul.' Among many letters which I received soon after WILLIS's death, was one which I can not resist the inclination to quote here:

MY DEAR SIR:

'Sunnyside Cottage, July 8, 1841.

'I HAVE not sooner replied to your letter of the eighteenth of June, communicating the intelligence of the untimely death of your brother, because in

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