It is now[9] a period of seventy years since I, John Critchley Prince, was born upon the earthly plane, at Wigan, Lancashire, England, of poor, hard-working, honest parents. My only schooling was given me at a Baptist Sunday school, where I received a slight knowledge of reading and writing. But as I read with avidity all sorts of books that happened to fall in my way, I acquired a certain command of language, and knowledge of composition, that served in after years as a noble substitute for the education I was unable to procure, and which I always craved. At the early age of nine years I was obliged to labor for my living as a reed-maker for weavers, at which I was kept busy for sixteen hours per day, and my only opportunity for indulging in the luxury of reading was stolen from sleep. Footnote 9: The above was written in the spring of 1878. In 1821 I accompanied my father to Manchester, where we both obtained employment as machinists. There, for the first time, I came across a copy of Byron’s works, which I devoured with astonishing rapidity, drinking in and retaining all the glory, fire, and beauty of those exquisite lines, and their delicate imagery, that made Byron, despite his faults, one of nature’s poets. What a world of delight, what a scene of enchantment was for the first time opened before me. I seemed to breathe a new atmosphere, one that thrilled my being to its very center; and while reveling in the new fields of splendor I had found, I forgot my poverty and toil; my soul stood forth erect in its conscious dignity and pride, feeling itself to be no longer a poor, toiling slave, but a creature of the universe, with powers and capabilities of expansion and growth. It was then I determined that some day I would sing my songs, and give them forth to the world. But my life went on in the old routine, still toiling in the shop, and dreaming my dreams all unknown to others, until my father again changed his abode to Hyde, taking me with him. There, in the early flush of awakening manhood, ere nineteen summers had passed over my head, came to my waiting soul that most exquisite of all life’s experiences, “Love’s young dream.” It came upon me like the first sweet dewy blush of early morn, bathing my spirit in a flood-tide of ineffable glory, and thrilling my heart with that ecstatic bliss that I think none but a poetic soul, attuned in harmony with nature and her works, and thus enabled to find happiness in spite of toil or sorrow, can fully realize. And here let me say that to this day, returning as I do from the immortal shore, I thank God for that experience of true, heartfelt emotion. It accompanied me through all my life like the melody of a happy song, and thrilled my despairing soul with its sweetness. It ran through my evil days of wrong-doing like a golden thread, and with its sparkling light revealed to me the glory and honor, the sweetness and purity, of life that might have been mine.