And what were we, the crowning achievement of American civilization,
like? I had not thought of it before. Here, then, was a question the
answer to which might benefit others as well as myself. I resolved to
answer it if I could--to write down in plain words and cold figures a
truthful statement of what I was and what they were.

I had been a fairly wide reader in my youth, and yet I did not recall
anywhere precisely this sort of self-analysis. Confessions, so called,
were usually amatory episodes in the lives of the authors, highly spiced
and colored by emotions often not felt at the time, but rather inspired
by memory. Other analyses were the contented, narratives of supposedly
poverty-stricken people who pretended they had no desires in the world
save to milk the cows and watch the grass grow. "Adventures in
contentment" interested me no more than adventures in unbridled passion.

I was going to try and see myself as I was--naked. To be of the
slightest value, everything I set down must be absolutely accurate and
the result of faithful observation. I believed I was a good observer. I
had heard myself described as a "cold proposition," and coldness was a
_sine qua non_ of my enterprise. I must brief my case as if I were an
attorney in an action at law. Or rather, I must make an analytical
statement of fact like that which usually prefaces a judicial opinion. I
must not act as a pleader, but first as a keen and truthful witness and
then as an impartial judge. And at the end I must either declare myself
innocent or guilty of a breach of trust--pronounce myself a faithful or
an unworthy servant.

I must dispassionately examine and set forth the actual conditions of my
home life, my business career, my social pleasures, the motives