No doubt there will be much self-betrayal in these pages, and he who can read between the lines, as a physiognomist would read character, will not find it difficult to read me. But then, this is the purpose of an Autobiography, and all will agree that it must be much more authentic than any record made of me by another man. Indeed, I wish to appear without disguise, as regards manners and opinions, habits and characteristics. If a nation can be said to be happy which has no history, that man is also happy whose uneventful life has not brought him into prominence, and who has nothing to record but the passing of years between the cradle and the grave. But I was not sent into the world to be happy, nor to search for happiness. I was sent for a special work. Now, from innocent boyhood and trustful youth, I have advanced to some height whence I can look down, pityingly; as a father I can look down upon that young man, Myself, with a chastened pride; he has done well, he might have done better, but his life has been a fulfilment, since he has finished the work he was sent to do. Amen. PART I AUTOBIOGRAPHY THROUGH THE WORLD THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR HENRY MORTON STANLEY CHAPTER I THE WORKHOUSE It is said that one of the patrician Mostyns, of North Wales, possesses a written pedigree forty feet long, to prove the claim of his family to a direct descent from Adam. Though no doubt much of this extraordinary genealogy is fabulous, it allows all of us plebeians a reasonable hope to believe that we are also descended from that venerated ancestor of our common humanity. The time has been when patrician families fondly believed their first progenitor had come direct from Heaven, and we baser creatures had to be content with an earthly sire.