But did they set me down in a sheltered garden, where the sun should warm me, and no winter should hurt, while they fed me from their hands?
No; they early let me run in the fields--perhaps because I would not be held--and eat of the wild fruits and drink of the dew.

Did they teach me from books, and tell me what to believe?
I soon chose my own books, and built me a world of my own.
In these discriminations _I_ emerged, a new being, something that had not been before.

And when I discovered my own friends, and ran home with them to convert my parents to a belief in their excellence, did I not begin to make my father and mother, as truly as they had ever made me?
Did I not become the parent and they the children, in those relations of teacher and learner?
And so I can say that there has been more than one birth of myself, and I can regard my earlier self as a separate being, and make it a subject of study.
A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession.

A true man finds so much work to do that he has no time to contemplate his yesterdays; for to-day and to-morrow are here, with their impatient tasks.

The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces.