es indulge in fibbing. The
ancient prejudice about the solar truth broke down, therefore, in that
instance; and who knows but Sun _senior_ may be detected, now that our
optical glasses are so much improved, in similar practices? in which
case he may have only been "keeping his hand in" when operating upon
that one feature of the mouth. The rest of the portrait, we all agree,
does credit to his talents, showing that he is still wide-awake, and not
at all the superannuated old artist that some speculators in philosophy
had dreamed of his becoming.

As an accompaniment to this portrait, your wish is that I should furnish
a few brief chronological memoranda of my own life. _That_ would be hard
for me to do, and, _when_ done, might not be very interesting for others
to read. Nothing makes such dreary and monotonous reading as the old
hackneyed roll-call, chronologically arrayed, of inevitable facts in a
man's life. One is so certain of the man's having been born, and also of
his having died, that it is dismal to lie under the necessity of reading
it. That the man began by being a boy--that he went to school--and that,
by intense application to his studies, "which he took to be _his_
portion in this life," he rose to distinction as a robber of orchards,
seems so probable, upon the whole, that I am willing to accept it as a
postulate. That he married--that, in fullness of time, he was hanged, or
(being a humble, unambitious man) that he was content with deserving
it--these little circumstances are so naturally to be looked for, as
sown broadcast up and down the great fields of biography, that any one
life becomes, in this respect, but the echo of thousands. Chronologic
successions of events and dates, such as these, which, belonging to the
race, illustrate nothing in the individual, are as wearisome as they are
useless.

A better plan will be--to detach some single chapter from the
experiences of childhood, which is likely to offer, at least, this kind
of value--either that it will record some of the deep impressions under
which my childish sensibilities expanded, and the ideas which at that
time brooded continually over my mind, or else will expose the traits of
character that slumbered in those around me. This plan will have the
advantage of not being liable to the suspicion of vanity or egotism; for
I beg the reader to understand distinctly, that I do not offer this
sketch as deriving any part of what interest it may have