Whatever else may be said of the writer, it cannot be predicated of him, as by Addison of a certain class of biographers of his day, "that they watched for the death of a great man, like so many undertakers, on purpose to make a penny by him." The subject of this little volume is neither a great man, nor, happily, is he yet numbered among the dead. Should it then be asked, Why write about small men at all, or, in any event, until after they are dead? The answer is at hand: it is the fashion of the times in which we live. The present is the age of small men, whose lives are necessarily written while living, lest, when dead, and all hope of reward is past, nothing should be remembered to be said of them. What, moreover, can be more agreeable, than for a man to read his own biography, especially when drawn by the partial hand of friendship, and retouched in each successive edition, as new circumstances require, new virtues are disclosed, and new deeds demand a record? It may be likened to the reading of one's own epitaph, wherein one can see to it for himself, that SHAKSPEARE did not speak advisedly when he wrote, "It is the evil only that men do that lives after them, while the good is interred with their bones." And besides, biography is history; and history has been defined to be "philosophy teaching by example." By having his own biography in his library, therefore, a man may become his own philosophical teacher, and save the expense of a professor; while, at the same time, he can enjoy the consolation of seeing how mankind around him are improving themselves by the study of his example. Should the subject of the present sketches object, that the writer has deviated from the course of most modern biographers, by the indulgence of his old-fashioned notions of impartiality and truth, he must plead guilty to the charge; but, in mitigation of punishment, he would beg leave to relate a story: