it); my subsequent connection for three
years with Colonel John Forney, during which Grant's election was
certainly carried by him, and in which, as he declared, I "had been his
right-hand man;" my writing of sundry books, such as the "Breitmann
Ballads," and my subsequent life in Europe to the year 1870.

I can enumerate in my memory distinctly half-a-dozen little-known men
whom I have known, and could with time recall far many more, compared to
whose lives my uneventful and calm career has been as that of the mole
before the eagle's. Yet not one of their lives will ever be written,
which is certainly a pity. The practice of writing real autobiographies
is rapidly ceasing in this our age, when it is bad form to be egoistic or
to talk about one's self, and we are almost shocked in revising those
chronicled in the _Causeries de Lundi_ of Sainte-Beuve. Nowadays we have
good gossipy reminiscences of _other_ people, in which the writer remains
as unseen as the operator of a Punch exhibition in his _schwassel_ box,
while he displays his puppets. I find no fault with this--_a chacun sa
maniere_. But it is very natural under such influences that men whose
own lives are full of and inspired with their _own_ deeds will not write
them on the model of Benvenuto Cellini. One of the greatest generals of
modern times, Lord Napier of Magdala, told me that he believed I was the
only person to whom he had ever fully narrated his experiences of the
siege of Lucknow. He seemed to be surprised at having so forgotten
himself. In ancient Viking days the hero made his debut in every society
with a "_Me voici_, _mes enfants_! Listen if you want to be astonished!"
and proceeded to tell how he had smashed the heads of kings, and mashed
the hearts of maidens, and done great deeds all round. It was bad
form--and yet we should never have known much about Regner Lodbrog but
for such a canticle. If I, in this work, have not quite effaced myself,
as good taste demands, let it be remembered that if I had, at the time of
writing, distinctly felt that it would be printed as put down, there
would, most certainly, have been much less of "me" visible, and the dead-
levelled work would have escaped much possible shot of censure. It was a
little in a spirit of defiant reaction that I resolved to let it be
published as it is, and risk the chances. As Uncle Toby declared that,
after all, a mother must in some kind of a way be a relation to her own