Of course no one will expect me to tell all my life. In fact, much of the most interesting part must be left out entirely, as is the case with all lives that are really worth the writing; and unless mine is one of these, why bother with the story? Polite society, that buys books and reads them,—at least reads them,—would not tolerate the whole; so this is an expurgated life, or, rather, an expurgated story of a life. Thank God, the life was not expurgated any more than absolutely necessary, sometimes not even so much as that. But so far as I can really tell my story, I shall make a brave endeavor to tell it truthfully, at least as near as the truth can be told by one who does not tell the whole truth,—which, after all, is not so very near. Lest anyone who might borrow this book and read it should think that I am not so very good, and am putting my best foot foremost, let me hasten to say that if I told the whole truth it would be much more favorable to me than this poor expurgated version will make it seem. I have done many very good things which I shall not dare to set down in these pages, for if I should record them some envious and unkind readers might say that I did these things in order to write them in a book and get fame and credit for their doing, and so after all they were not really good. But even the bad things that I leave out were not so very bad,—indeed, they were not bad at all, if one has my point of view of life and knows all the facts. The trouble is, there are so few who have my point of view, and most of those are bound to pretend that they have not. Then, too, no one could possibly tell all the facts, for one can write only with pen and ink, and long after everything is past and gone, while one lives with flesh and blood, and sometimes tingling blood at that, and only a single moment at a time. So it may be that no one could write a really truthful story if he would, and perhaps the old fogies are right in fixing the line as to what may be set down and what must be left out. At least, I promise that the reader who proclaims his propriety the loudest, and from the highest house-top, need not have the slightest fear—or hope—about this book, for I shall watch every word with the strictest care, and the moment I find myself wandering from the beaten path I shall fetch myself up with the roundest and the quickest turn. And so, having made myself thus clear as to the plans and purposes of my story, there is no occasion to tarry longer at its threshold.