In a vein colloquial and reminiscential, not ambitious, let me recall some impressions which these have left upon the mind of one who long ago reached and turned the corner of the Scriptural limitation; who, approaching fourscore, does not yet feel painfully the frost of age beneath the ravage of time's defacing waves.

Assuredly they have not obliterated his sense either of vision or vista.

Mindful of the adjuration of Burns, Keep something to yourself, Ye scarcely tell to ony, I shall yet hold little in reserve, having no state secrets or mysteries of the soul to reveal.
It is not my purpose to be or to seem oracular.

I shall not write after the manner of Rousseau, whose Confessions had been better honored in the breach than the observance, and in any event whose sincerity will bear question; nor have I tales to tell after the manner of Paul Barras, whose Memoirs have earned him an immortality of infamy.

Neither shall I emulate the grandiose volubility and self-complacent posing of Metternich and Talleyrand, whose pretentious volumes rest for the most part unopened upon dusty shelves.