To read these stories again, thirty and more years after they were written, is to recall many memories, sad or glad, with which this reader need not be interrupted. But I have to make sure that they are intelligible to readers of a generation later than that for which they were written. The story of The Brick Moon was begun in my dear brother Nathan’s working-room in Union College, Schenectady, in the year 1870, when he was professor of the English language there. The account of the first plan of the moon is a sketch, as accurate as was needed, of the old chat and dreams, plans and jokes, of our college days, before he left Cambridge in 1838. As I learned almost everything I know through his care and love and help, directly or indirectly, it is a pleasure to say this here. The story was published in the “Atlantic Monthly,” in 1870 and 1871. It was the last story I wrote for that magazine, before assuming the charge of “Old and New,” a magazine which I edited from 1870 to 1876, and for which I wrote “Ten Times One is Ten,” which has been printed in the third volume of this series.
