Dear Friend Robert Merry: 1870

1870.2.100

M—, Mass., May 27, 1870.

Dear Editors: My little son brought from the post-office to-night the first number of Merry’s Museum, for which his mother had subscribed. Upon casting my eyes over its pages, I thought it must be the identical magazine which my father took for me in my boyhood. If, indeed, it be so, I am glad to make its acquaintance once more, after a separation of at least a quarter of a century.

How great was my interest in the old magazine! Nothing I have ever read since has clung so fast in my memory. The Siberian Sable Hunter, Bill Keeler, Thomas Trotter, and all the rest are my boyhood’s heroes.

But I am getting excited. I only took up my pen to thank you for an introduction to a long absent friend.

Respectfully yours,
B. C. S—.

Siberian Sable Hunter (in Robert Merry’s Museum; 1841-1842), a 14-part series. The son and daughter of a Russian exiled to Siberia work hard and succeed because of their goodness and patience. The story includes education on matters geographical and moral, punctuated by hair-breadth escapes.

Bill Keeler: a storyteller whose humorous and moral tales are told in “Bill and the Boys” (Robert Merry’s Museum, 1844).

Thomas Trotter: “The Travels, Adventures, and Experiences of Thomas Trotter” (1841-1842) and “Travels and Adventures in Circassia, by Thomas Trotter” (1845-1846): fictionalized geographies which alternate adventure and humor with descriptions of the landscape and culture of Europe and of the Middle East.