y a life prominent and prolonged is
a desire as natural as worthy, and there have been those who sought to
extend its duration by nostrums and drinking-waters said to bestow the
virtue of "perpetual life." But if "to live in hearts we leave behind is
not to die," to be worthy of such memorial we must have done or said
something that blessed the living or benefited coming generations. Hence
autobiography is the record, for "books are as tombstones made by the
living, but destined soon to remind us of the dead."

Trusting that any absence of literary merit will not impair the author's
cherished design to "impart a moral," should he fail to "adorn a tale."

Little Rock, Ark., January, 1902.

INTRODUCTION.

By BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.

It is seldom that one man, even if he has lived as long as Judge M. W.
Gibbs is able to record his impressions of so many widely separated
parts of the earth's surface as Judge Gibbs can, or to recall personal
experiences in so many important occurrences.

Born in Philadelphia, and living there when that city--almost on the
border line between slavery and freedom--was the scene of some of the
most stirring incidents in the abolition agitation, he was able as a
free colored youth, going to Maryland to work, to see and judge of the
condition of the slaves in that State. Some of the most dramatic
operations of the famous "Underground Railroad" came under his personal
observation. He enjoyed the rare privilege of being associated in labor
for the race with that man of sainted memory, the Hon. Frederick
Douglass. He met and heard many of the most notable men and women who
labored to secure the freedom of the Negro. As a resident of California
in the exciting years which immediately followed the discovery of gold,
he watched the development of lawlessness there and its results. A few
years later he went to British Columbia to live, when that colony was
practically an unknown country. Returning to the United States, he was a
witness to the exciting events connected with the years of
Reconstruction in Florida, and an active participant in the events of
that period in the State of Arkansas. At one time and another he has met
many of the men who have been prominent in the direction of the affairs
of both the great political parties of the country. In more recent years
he has been able to see something of life in Europe, and in his official
capacity as United States Consul to Tamatave, Ma