Excerpt from The Valley and the Shadow: Comprising the Experiences of a Blind Ex-Editor, a Literary Biography, Humorous Autobiographical Sketches, a Chapter on Iowa Journalism, and Sketches of the West and Western Men Through the aid of my wife, as an amanuensis, I immediately wrote an urgent appeal for help to print my book, and addressed it to my friends in Iowa, whose sympathies had followed me through all my misfortunes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.