and his last is of perennial warning. As a
barber once sagely remarked to me, "You can't trim a beard well,
unless you're born to it." It is possible in some degree to imitate
Froissart and Boswell in that marvellous diligence to accumulate
material which was common to them both; but, when gathered, how
impossible it is to work up that old junk into permanent engrossing
interest let those answer who have grappled with ancient chronicles,
or with many biographies. So, with a circumlocution which probably
convicts me in advance of decisive deficiency as a narrator, I let
myself go. I have no model, unless it be the old man sitting in the
sun on a summer's day, bringing forth out of his memories things new
and old--mostly old.

A. T. MAHAN.

INTRODUCING MYSELF

While extracts from the following pages were appearing in _Harper's
Magazine_, I received a letter from a reader hoping that I would say
something about myself before entering the navy. This had been outside
my purpose, which was chiefly to narrate what had passed around me
that I thought interesting; but it seems possibly fit to establish in
a few words my antecedents by heredity and environment.

I was born September 27, 1840, within the boundaries of the State of
New York, but not upon its territory; the place, West Point on the
Hudson River, having been ceded to the General Government for the
purposes of the Military Academy, at which my father, Dennis Hart
Mahan, was then Professor of Engineering, as well Civil as Military.
He himself was of pure Irish blood, his father and mother, already
married, having emigrated together from the old country early in the
last century; but he was also American by birthright, having been born
in April, 1802, very soon after the arrival of his parents in the city
of New York. There also he was baptized into the Roman Catholic
Church, in the parish of St. Peter's, the church building of which now
stands far down town, in Barclay Street. It is not, I believe, the
same that existed in 1802.

Very soon afterwards, before he reached an age to remember, his
parents removed to Norfolk, Virginia, where he grew up and formed his
earliest associations. As is usual, these colored his whole life; he
was always a Virginian in attachment and preference. In the days of
crisis he remained firm to the Union, by conviction and affection; but
he broke no friendships, and to t