The proprietors of the "Alta" engaged me to write an account of the trip for that paper--fifty letters of a column and a half each, which would be about two thousand words per letter, and the pay to be twenty dollars per letter.
I went East to St.Louis to say good-bye to my mother, and then I was bitten by the prospectus of Captain Duncan of the "Quaker City" excursion, and I ended by joining it.

During the trip I wrote and sent the fifty letters; six of them miscarried, and I wrote six new ones to complete my contract.

Then I put together a lecture on the trip and delivered it in San Francisco at great and satisfactory pecuniary profit, then I branched out into the country and was aghast at the result: I had been entirely forgotten, I never had people enough in my houses to sit as a jury of inquest on my lost reputation! I inquired into this curious condition of things and found that the thrifty owners of that prodigiously rich "Alta" newspaper had _copyrighted_ all those poor little twenty-dollar letters, and had threatened with prosecution any journal which should venture to copy a paragraph from them! And there I was! I had contracted to furnish a large book, concerning the excursion, to the American Publishing Co.

of Hartford, and I supposed I should need all those letters to fill it out with.

I was in an uncomfortable situation--that is, if the proprietors of this stealthily acquired copyright should refuse to let me use the letters.
That is just what they did; Mr.Mac--something--I have forgotten the rest of his name--said his firm were going to make a book out of the letters in order to get back the thousand dollars which they had paid for them.