Secondly, it is about some one very dear to me, as will appear hereafter.

Thirdly, it is the only original story in my somewhat limited collection, and I am naturally rather proud of the favour with which it is invariably received.

I think it was the foolish fancy of my dear wife and children combined that this most veracious history should be committed to paper.

It was either because--being so unused to authorship--I had no notion of composition, and was troubled by a tyro tendency to stray from my subject; or because the part played by the flat iron, though important, was small; or because I and my affairs were most chiefly interesting to myself as writer, and my family as readers; or from a combination of all these reasons together, that my tale outgrew its first title and we had to add a second, and call it "Some Passages in the Life of an only Son." Yes, I was an only son.

I was an only child also, speaking as the world speaks, and not as Wordsworth's "simple child" spoke.