Excerpt: "“The author, being a resident of New York during the period of the leading incidents narrated as occurring in that city, had formed the acquaintance of the principal personage. Himself a Southerner, he had, from the natural affinities of origin, inevitably been attracted toward Carter. The intercourse between them, at first reserved, had imperceptibly warmed into a degree of intimacy, which, however, had by no means been such as to render him at all cognisant, beyond the merest generalities, of the progress of his private affairs. He was not a little surprised, therefore, at finding, one day, an elegant escritoire or cabinet, of dark, rich wood, heavily banded in the old-fashioned style with silver, which had been placed, in his absence, on the table of his sanctum. A note, in a sealed envelope, lay upon it. He instantly recognised the handwriting of the address as that of Mr. Carter, and broke the seal."
Charles Wilkins Webber (May 29, 1819 – April 11, 1856) was a United States journalist and explorer. Webber was born at Russellville, Kentucky. He was the son of Augustine Webber, a well-known physician in Kentucky. His mother, who was the daughter of Gen. John Tannehill, passed on to him a fondness for outdoor life. In 1838, Webber went to Texas, then struggling for independence; was for several years connected with the famous Texas Rangers, seeing much of wild and adventurous life on the frontier; returned to Kentucky and studied medicine; afterward entered Princeton Theological Seminary with a view to the Presbyterian ministry, but abandoned that purpose, and settled in New York as a writer for literary periodicals, especially The New World, The Democratic Review, and The Sunday Despatch; was associate editor and joint proprietor of The Whig Review; planned, with the two sons of his friend John James Audubon the naturalist, a monthly magazine of mammoth size, to be illustrated with copper-plate colored engravings by Audubon, but published only the first number; was engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to lead an exploring and mining expedition to the region of the Colorado and Gila rivers in 1849. A principal reason for the failure of the expedition to the west was the seizure of the horses by Comanche Indians. The difficulty in crossing the western deserts led to his efforts to form a camel company, for which he obtained a charter from the New York legislature in 1854. In 1855 he went to Central America, where he joined the filibuster William Walker in Nicaragua and was killed in a skirmish.