Orthodox journalists may object to my assumption of their title. In my
multifarious occupation and random life I have, as I see when I look
back found my highest activity, and rendered my most serious services
to others, in my occupation as a journalist--all the rest was fringe
or failure. If I have been good for anything it was in connection
with, or through my position on, the press. And it would be ungrateful
and dishonest if I should omit to bear my testimony to the noble
character and large sincerity of the great journal to which the most
of my strength for more than twenty years has been given. If ever
I had a noble impulse, aroused by wrongs that came to my knowledge
during those years, a good cause to defend, or a public abuse to
attack, "The Times" has never refused to give me room to tell my
story, nor have I ever been expected to conform my views to those of
the office, or shape my correspondence to any ulterior purpose; nor
have I ever done so. And I consider it the greatest honor that has
ever come to me to have been so many years in its service, and to have
maintained the confidence of its direction.

To my critics much that I have told may seem trivial. I cannot judge
of what may interest others. I should hardly have believed that my
life as a whole could interest a public that does not know me, and I
am equally unable to judge of the value which its details may have to
others. In default of any criterion beyond my own judgment, I have
selected the items which had to me most importance, or had a marked
influence on my life or an interest beyond myself. I have told things
that will seem trite to Americans, and others that will be commonplace
to Englishmen, but I have two publics to think of, differing in slight
matters in their knowledge of things.

In affixing to the book the portraits of myself, I have yielded my own