WERE I to give vent to that Garrulity which grows upon us Veterans with Gout and the Gravel, and the kindred Ailments of Age, this Account of my Life would never reach beyond the record of Boyhood. For from the first Flower of my freshest childhood to the time that I became toward the more serious Business of the World, I think I could set down Day by Day, and well-nigh Hour by Hour, all the things that have occurred to me. How is it that I preserve so keen a Remembrance of a little lad's joys and sorrows, when I can scarcely recall how many times I have suffered Shipwreck in later age, or tell how many Sansfoy Miscreants, caring neither for Heaven or man a Point, I have slain? Nay, from what cause does it proceed that I, upon whom the broken reliques of my Schoolmaster's former Cruelty are yet Green, and who can conjure up all the events that bore upon my Running away into Charlwood Chase, even to the doggish names of the Blacks, their ribald talk, and the fleering of the Women they had about them, find it sore travail to remember what I had for dinner yesterday, what friends I conversed with, what Tavern I supped at, what news I read in the Gazette? But 'tis the knowledge of that overweening Craving to count up the trivial Things of my Youth that warns me to use despatch, even if the chronicle of my after doings be but a short summary or sketch of so many Perils by Land and Sea. And for this manner of the remotest things being the more distinct and dilated upon, let me put it to a Man of keen vision, if whirling along a High Road in a rapid carriage, he has not marked, first, that the Palings and Milestones close by have passed beneath him in a confused and jarring swiftness; next, that the Trees, Hedges, &c., of the middle-plan (as the limners call it) have moved slower and with more Deliberation, yet somewhat Fitfully, and encroaching on each other's outlines; whereas the extreme distance in Clouds, Mountains, far-off Hillsides, and the like, have seemed remote, indeed, but stationary, clear, and unchangeable; so that you could count the fissures in the hoar rocks, and the very sheep still feeding on the smooth slopes, even as they fed fifty years ago? And who (let his later life have been ever so fortunate) does not preferably dwell on that sharp prospect so clearly yet so light looming through the Long Avenue of years?