i begin this story with the personal pronoun. to begin it in any other way would be only a commonplace assumption of a modesty that i do not really have. it is most natural that the personal pronoun should stand as the first word of this tale, for i cannot remember a time when my chief thoughts and emotions did not concern myself, or were not in some way related to myself. i look back through the years that have passed, and find that the first consciousness of my being and the hazy indistinct memories of my childhood are all about myself,—what the world, and its men and its women, and its beasts and its plants, meant to me. this feeling is all there is of the past and all there is of the present; and as i look forward on my fast shortening 2path, i am sure that my last emotions, like my first, will come from the impressions that the world is yet able to make upon the failing senses that shall still connect me with mortal life.

so why should i not begin this tale with the personal pronoun? and why should i not use it over and over again, with no effort to disguise the fact that whatever the world may be to you, still to me it is nothing except as it influences and affects my life and me?

i have been told that i was born a long time ago, back in the state of pennsylvania, on the outskirts of a little struggling town that slept by day and by night along a winding stream, and between two ranges of high hills that stood sentinel on either side. the valley was very narrow, and so too were all the people who lived in the little town. these built their small white frame houses and barns close to the river-side, for it was only near its winding banks that the soil would raise corn, potatoes, and hay,—potatoes for the people, and hay and corn for the other inhabitants, who were almost as important to the landscape and almost as close to my early life as the men 3and women who gathered each sunday in the large white church, and who had no doubt that they were different from the horses and cattle, and would live in some future world that these other animals would never reach. even then i felt that perhaps, if this was true, the horses and cattle had the best of the scheme of the universe, for the men and women never seemed to enjoy life very much, excepting here and there some solitary person who was pointed out as a terrible example, who would surely suffer in the next world during the eternity which my long-faced sober neighbors would spend in enjoying the pleasures they had so righteously denied themselves while here on earth.

of course no one will expect me to tell all my life. in fact, much of the most interesting part must be left out entirely, as is the case with all lives that are really worth the writing; and unless mine is one of these, why bother with the story? polite society, that buys books and reads them,—at least reads them,—would not tolerate the whole; so this is an expurgated life, or, rather, an expurgated story of a life. thank god, the life was not expurgated 4any more than absolutely necessary, sometimes not even so much as that. but so far as i can really tell my story, i shall make a brave endeavor to tell it truthfully, at least as near as the truth can be told by one who does not tell the whole truth,—which, after all, is not so very near.

lest anyone who might borrow this book and read it should think that i am not so very good, and am putting my best foot foremost, let me hasten to say that if i told the whole truth it would be much more favorable to me than this poor expurgated version will make it seem. i have done many very good things which i shall not dare to set down in these pages, for if i should record them some envious and unkind readers might say that i did these things in order to write them in a book and get fame and credit for their doing, and so after all they were not really good. but even the bad things that i leave out were not so very bad,—indeed, they were not bad at all, if one has my point of view of life and knows all the facts. the trouble is, there are so few who have my point of view, and most of those are bound to pretend that they have not. then, too, no 5one could possibly tell all the facts, for one can write only with pen and ink, and long after everything is past and gone, while one lives with flesh and blood, and sometimes tingling blood at that, and only a single moment at a time. so it may be that no one could write a really truthful story if he would, and perhaps the old fogies are right in fixing the line as to what may be set down and what must be left out. at least, i promise that the reader who proclaims his propriety the loudest, and from the highest house-top, need not have the slightest fear—or hope—about this book, for i shall watch every word with the strictest care, and the moment i find myself wandering from the beaten path i shall fetch myself up with the roundest and the quickest turn. and so, having made myself thus clear as to the plans and purposes of my story, there is no occasion to tarry longer at its threshold.

i have always had the highest regard for integrity, and have ever by precept urged it upon other people; therefore in these pages i shall try, as i have said, to tell the truth; still i am afraid that i shall not succeed, for, after all, i can tell about things only as they seem 6to me,—and i am not in the least sure that my childhood home, and the boys and girls with whom i played, were really like what they seem to have been, when i rub my eyes and awaken in the fairy-land that i left so long ago. so, to be perfectly honest with the reader,—which i am bound to be as long as i can and as far as i can,—i will say that this story is only a story of impressions after all. but this is doubtless the right point of view, for life consists only of impressions, and when the impressions are done the life is done.

i really do not know just why i am telling this story, for it is only fair to let the reader know at the beginning, so that he need not waste his time, that nothing ever happened to me,—that is, nothing has happened yet, and all my life i have been trying hard to keep things from happening. but as nothing ever happened, how can there be any story for me to write? i am unable to weave any plot, because there never were any plots in my life, excepting a few that never came to anything, and so were really no part of my life. what happened to me is nothing more than what 7happens to everyone; so why should i expect people to bother to read my story? why should they pay money to buy my book, which is not a story after all?

i hardly think i am writing this for fame. if that were the case, i should tell the things that i leave out, for i know that they would be more talked about than the commonplace things that i set down. but i have always wanted to write a book. i remember when i was very small, and used to climb on a chair and look at the rows of books on my father’s shelves, i thought it must be a wonderful being who could write all the pages of a big book, and i would have given all the playthings that i ever hoped to have for the assurance that some day i might possibly write down so many words and have them printed and bound into a book. but my father always told me i could never write a book unless i studied hard,—latin, greek, geometry, history, and a lot of things that i knew nothing about then and not much more now. as i grew older, i was too poor and too lazy to learn all the things that my good father said i must know if i should ever write a book, but i never gave up the longing, even when i felt how impossible it would be to realize my dream.

i never studied geometry, or history, or greek, and i studied scarcely any latin, and not much arithmetic; and i never did anything with grammar, except to study it,—in fact, i always thought that this was the only purpose for which grammar was invented. but in spite of all this, i wanted to write a book, and resolved that i would write a book. of course, as i am not a scholar, and have never learned anything out of books to tell about in other books, there was nothing for me to do but tell of the things that had happened to me. so i tell this story because it is the only story i know,—and even this one i do not know so very well. sometimes i think i am one kind of person, and then sometimes i think i am another kind; and i am never quite sure why i do any particular thing, or why i do not do it, excepting the things i am afraid to do. but there is no reason now why i should not write this book, for i have money enough to get it printed and bound, and even if no one ever buys a copy still i can say that i have written 9a book. i understand that a great many books are published in this way, and i must have read a number that never would have been printed if the author had not been able to pay for them himself.

but i have put off writing this story for many, many years, until at last i am beginning to think of getting old; and if i linger much longer over unimportant excuses and explanations, i fear that i shall die, and future generations will never know that i have lived. for i am quite certain that no one else will ever write my story, and unless i really get to work, even my name will be forgotten excepting by the few who go back to my old-time home, and open the wire gate of the little graveyard, and go down the winding path between the white headstones until they reach my mound. i know that they will find it there, for i have already made my will and provided that i shall be carried back to the little pennsylvania town beside the winding stream where i used to stone the frogs; and i have written down the exact words that shall be carved upon my marble headstone,—that is, all the words except those that are to tell of the last event, and these we are all of us very willing to leave to someone else.

but this story is about life and action, and boys and girls, and men and women; and i really did not intend to take the reader to my grave in the very first chapter of the book.