ing to him, and
would be to his reader, and were vastly more numerous than his
collisions with the famous.

Howells was here yesterday afternoon, and I told him the whole scheme of
this autobiography and its apparently systemless system--only apparently
systemless, for it is not really that. It is a deliberate system, and
the law of the system is that I shall talk about the matter which for
the moment interests me, and cast it aside and talk about something else
the moment its interest for me is exhausted. It is a system which
follows no charted course and is not going to follow any such course. It
is a system which is a complete and purposed jumble--a course which
begins nowhere, follows no specified route, and can never reach an end
while I am alive, for the reason that, if I should talk to the
stenographer two hours a day for a hundred years, I should still never
be able to set down a tenth part of the things which have interested me
in my lifetime. I told Howells that this autobiography of mine would
live a couple of thousand years, without any effort, and would then take
a fresh start and live the rest of the time.

He said he believed it would, and asked me if I meant to make a library
of it.

I said that that was my design; but that, if I should live long enough,
the set of volumes could not be contained merely in a city, it would
require a State, and that there would not be any multi-billionaire
alive, perhaps, at any time during its existence who would be able to
buy a full set, except on the instalment plan.

Howells applauded, and was full of praises and endorsement, which was
wise in him and judicious. If he had manifested a different spirit, I
would have thrown him out of the window. I like criticism, but it must
be my way.

I.

Back of the Virginia Clemenses is a dim procession of ancestors
stretching back to Noah's time. According to tradition, some of them
were pirates and slavers in Elizabeth's time. But this is no discredit
to them, for so were Drake and Hawkins and the others. It was a
respectable trade, then, and monarchs were partners in it. In my time I
have had desires to be a pirate myself. The reader--if he will look deep
down in his secret heart, will find--but never mind what he will find
there; I am not writing his Autobiography, but mine. Later, according to
tradition, one of the procession was Ambassador to Spain in the time of
James I, or of Charles I, and married there and sent