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35 STORY OF LEWIS AND CLARK'S JOURNALS. 35 time of publication (February 20, 1814) lt5 were in the bankruptcy court. Just before going to press Biddle was elected to the legis- lature, in which he soon won an enviable reputation for statesmanlike qualities. Being thus prevented from pay- ing that attention to the book which he thought it de- served, he engaged Paul Allen, a Philadelphia newspaper writer, to supervise the issue. In a letter to Clark (March 23), reviewing some of the circumstances of the publica- tion, Biddle says : "The gentleman who received and pre- pared it for the press, Mr. Allen, is a very capable person, and as I did not put the finishing hand to the volumes I did not think it right to take from him the credit of his own exertion and care by announcing personally the part which I had in the compilation. I am content that my trouble in the business should be recognized only by the pleasure which attended it and also by the satisfaction of making your acquaintance, which I shall always value. I could have wished that your time had permitted you to revise the whole of the work, as no doubt some errors and inadvertences have from the nature of the volumes and the circumstances attending the publication crept into them. I hope however, that you will not find them very numerous or important. * * * Henceforth you may sleep upon your fame, which must last as long as books can en- dure. Mr. Bradford has, I presume, sent you a copy of the work." Not long after this (July 1, 1813), General Clark, who since the expedition had been a resident of 16 The date of the first sale of volumes. See Coues's Lewis and Clark, I, pp. xci, xcii, for detailed statement of the financial outcome of the enterprise. The full title of the work was : History of the exploration under the Com- mand, of Captains Lewis and Clark, to the Sources of the Missouri, thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. Per- formed during the years 1804-5-6. By order of the Government of the United States. Prepared for the Press by Paul Allen, Esquire. Philadelphia : Bradford and Inskeep, 1814. 2 vols.