t as well have the benefit of it.

In the meantime, it is to be hoped that in the next chapter The
Presiding Genius of the State of Massachusetts, or somebody--will get a
word in.

VI

Parenthesis To the Gentle Reader

This was a footnote at first. It is placed at the top of the page in the
hope that it will point at itself more and let the worst out at once. I
want to say I--a little--in this book.

I do not propose to do it very often. Indeed I am not sure just now,
that I shall be able to do it at all, but I would like to have the
feeling as I go along that arrangements have been made for it, and that
it is all understood, and that if I am fairly good about it--ring a
little bell or something--and warn people, I am going to be
allowed--right here in my own book at least--to say I when I want to.

I is the way I feel on the inside about this subject. Anybody can see
it. And I want to be honest, in the first place, and in the second place
(like a good many other people) I never have had what could be called a
real good chance to say I in this world, and I feel that if I
had--somehow, it would cure me.

I have tried other ways. I have tried calling myself he. I have stated
my experiences in principles--called myself it, and in the first part of
this book I have already fallen into the way--page after page--of
borrowing other people, when all the time I knew perfectly well (and
everybody) that I preferred myself. At all events this calling one's
self names--now one and now another,--working one's way _incognito_, all
the way through one's own book, is not making me as modest as I had
hoped. There seems to be nothing for it--with some of us, but to work
through to modesty the other way--backward--I it out.

There is one other reason. This Mysterious Person I have arranged with
in these opening chapters, to say I for me, does not seem to me to be
doing it very well. I think any one--any fairly observing person--would
admit that I could do it better, and if it's going to be done at all,
why should a mere spiritual machine--a kind of moral phonograph like
this Mysterious Person--be put forward to take the ignominy of it? I
have set my "I" up before me and duly cross-examined it. I have said to
it, "Either you are good enough to say I in a book or you are not," and
my "I" has replied to me, "If I am not, I want everybody to know why and
if I am--am----." Well of course he is not, and we will all help him to
know w