The Project Gutenberg eBook, My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson,
by George Thompson

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Title: My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson
Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself.

Author: George Thompson

Release Date: April 29, 2009 [eBook #28635]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY LIFE: OR THE ADVENTURES OF GEO.
THOMPSON***

E-text prepared by Matt Whittaker, Suzanne Shell, and the Project
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* Transcriber's Note: *
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* Obvious typographical errors were corrected and the use of hyphens *
* was made consistent throughout. All other spelling and punctuation *
* was retained as it appeared in the original text. *
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MY LIFE:

Or

The Adventures of Geo. Thompson.
Being the Auto-Biography of an
Author. Written by Himself.

Why rove in _Fiction's_ shadowy land,
And seek for treasures there,
When _Truth's_ domain, so near at hand,
Is filled with things most rare--
When every day brings something new,
Some great, stupendous change,
Something exciting, wild and _true_,
Most wonderful and strange!

[ORIGINAL.]

{First published 1854}

[Illustration: Yellow Cover of Thompson's _My Life_. Original size 6 x
9-1/8". Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society.]

INTRODUCTION

_In which the author defineth his position._

It having become the fashion of distinguished novelists to write their
own lives--or, in other words, to blow their own trumpets,--the author
of these pages is induced, at the solicitation of numerous friends,
whose bumps of inquisitiveness are strongly developed, to present his
auto-biography to the public--in so doing which, he but follows the
example of Alexandre Dumas, the brilliant French novelist, and of