And there is certainly some merit in telling the truth, for it is hard work when one is his own hero, and not what is sometimes termed a moral hero at that. I can too, I may add, claim this single merit from the start, with a meekness almost bordering on honesty; since it happens that I am forced to be veracious by the fact that there are scores of people yet in the prime of life who are cognizant of the main events of the ensuing narrative. CHAPTER II. FAMILY MATTERS. It may be laid down as a general principle, to start with, that a boy had better not run away from home. Good and pious reasons are not wanting, and might be here adduced, in substantiation of this general principle. Some trite moralizing might be done just now, in a grave statement that an urchin needs not run away into the world after its troubles, since they will come running to him soon enough, and that a home is the last fortress weary men build (and oftentimes place in their wives’ names) against the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune. Why, therefore, it may be asked, with overwhelming conviction to the adult,--who, by the way, is not supposed to be one of the congregation of the present preaching,--why, therefore, should the juvenile fugitive hasten unduly to leave what all the effort of his after life will be to regain? Thus having done my duty by any boy of a restless disposition who may chance to read these memoirs and be influenced by my vagrant example, I proceed to state that I ran away from home at the mature age of eleven, and have not been back, to stay over night, from that remote period to this present writing. It is due, however, to both of us,--the home and myself,--to observe that it was not a very attractive hearth that I ran from. My father and mother were dead, and no brothers or sisters of mine were there,--nothing at all, indeed, like affection, but something very much like its opposite. On the whole, I think, under exactly the same circumstances, I would run away again. But I hope this remark will not lead the thoughtless reader to assume that I am not of a respectable family; no well-regulated memoir could be written without one. A “respectable family” has long since become the acknowledged starting-point, and not unfrequently the scapegoat, of your conventional autobiography. _A posteriori_, therefore, our respectability is established from the very fact that there is an autobiographer in the family.