fortunes. A great deal of my money went for cheap comic
literature, which I carefully preserved. In those days there were
Crockett's almanacs (now a great fund of folk-lore), and negro songs and
stories were beginning to be popular. It is very commonly asserted that
the first regular negro minstrel troupe appeared in 1842. This is quite
an error. While I was at Mr. Greene's, in 1835, there came to Dedham a
circus with as regularly-appointed a negro minstrel troupe of a dozen as
I ever saw. I often beheld the pictures of them on the bill. Nor do I
think that this was any novelty even then. The Crockett almanacs greatly
stimulated my sense of American humour (they do indeed form collectively
a very characteristic work), and this, with some similar reading, awoke
in me a passion for wild Western life and frontier experiences, which was
fully and strangely gratified in after years, but which would certainly
have never happened had it not been for this boyish reading.

For I beg the reader to observe that it is a very deeply-seated
characteristic that whatever once takes root in my mind invariably grows.
This comes from the great degree to which I have always gone over,
reviewed, and _reflected on_, or nursed everything which ever once really
interested me. And as I have thus far written, and shall probably
conclude this work without referring to a note, the reader will have
ample opportunity of observing how very strangely in all cases the phases
of my life were predetermined long before by the literary education which
I gave myself, aided very much by hereditary or other causes quite beyond
my control. Now, as the object of a _Life_ is to understand every cause
which created it, and as mine was to a very unusual degree created by
reading and _reflecting_, even in infancy, I beg the reader not to be
impatient with me for describing so much in detail the books which made
my mind at different times. That is, I pray this much allowance and
sympathy from possible readers and critics, that they will kindly not
regard me as vain or thinking over-much of, or too much over, myself. For
to get oneself forth as one really is requires deep investigation into
_every_ cause, and the depicting all early characteristics, and the man
never lived who ever did this truly and accurately without much egoism,
or what the ill-disposed may treat as such. And I promise the possible
reader that when this subjective analysis shall be fai