peculiar and important in the historic growth and moral changes and destiny of his country. The composition of a narrative doing justice to a life with such contents and such relations may well be thought worth the while of any one. And if it be properly composed, if the programme here laid down be adequately filled up, the result cannot fail to offer instructions worthy the attention of the American people. For the reasons now explained, the most intimate friends of Forrest had often tried to induce him to write his own memoir. They knew that such a work would possess extreme interest and value, and they felt that he had every qualification to do it better than it could be done by anybody else. But their efforts were vain. Pride in him was greater than vanity. He had as much self-respect as he had self-complacency. He was, therefore, not ruled by those motives which caused Cicero, Augustine, Petrarch, Rousseau, Gibbon, and a throng of lesser men, to take delight in painting their own portraits, describing their own experiences, toning up the details with elaborate touches. To the reiterated arguments urged by his friends, he replied, "I have all my life been surrounded, as it were, by mirrors reflecting me to myself at every turn; subjected to those praises and censures which keep consciousness in a fever; accompanied at every step by a constant clapping of hands and stamping of feet and pointing of fingers, with the shout or the whisper, 'There goes Forrest!' I have for years been sick of this fixing of attention on myself. I can enjoy sitting down alone and recalling the scenes and occurrences of the past, regarding them as objects and events outside. But to call them up distinctly as parts of myself, and record them as a connected whole, with constant references to the standards in my own mind and the prejudices in the minds of my friends and my enemies,--I cannot do it. The pain of the reminiscences, the distress of the fixed self-contemplation, would be too much. It would drive me mad. Give over. No persuasion on earth can induce me to think of it."