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Preface.

An old author may sometimes experience less difficulty in illustrating a subject than in finding a suitable subject for illustration. With regard to the present unpretending work—probably the last that will ever proceed from the same pen—the conception of the offspring involved a much longer period than that which has been employed in clothing it.

One day—after a long season of repose—when the author was quietly turning over the pages of his own diary, the following question suddenly presented itself to the mind of the writer:—"Where shall I find a subject, founded on fact, with a greater variety of incident than is here recorded, or where look for a more eventful life than that of the recorder?" The answer was—"I know not." Hereupon, a private discussion arose between self and ditto. Self had no desire to give undue prominence to his own figure. Not one of the fifteen volumes he had page ivalready given to the world had been disfigured by a portrait of Number One. Although in his humble capacity as a literary laborer, he had been accustomed to the use of the modest yet mighty symbol of power to be found in the editorial "we," the great and superlative "I" had never been pushed beyond the title page of his own works. Let others decide whether time, situation, and circumstance have justified the departure from this rule.

The reader has only to be informed, before proceeding on his journey, that the ground work of the following pages may be regarded as fact. Those pages reveal many of the writer's errors in the Way of the World—not all. Should the present feeble reflection of such errors prove a light by which some brother traveller or travellers may avoid similar mistakes in life, the simple knowledge of that fact will in itself amply reward