I asked him to try to tell the straight truth in it; to refrain from exhibiting himself in creditable attitudes exclusively, and to honorably set down all the incidents of his life which he had found interesting to him, including those which were burned into his memory because he was ashamed of them.

I said that this had never been done, and that if he could do it his autobiography would be a most valuable piece of literature.

I said I was offering him a job which I could not duplicate in my own case, but I would cherish the hope that he might succeed with it.

I recognise now that I was trying to saddle upon him an impossibility.

I have been dictating this autobiography of mine daily for three months; I have thought of fifteen hundred or two thousand incidents in my life which I am ashamed of, but I have not gotten one of them to consent to go on paper yet.