CHAPTER I--CHILDHOOD



Now that I have completed my autobiography up to the present year, I
sometimes doubt whether it is right to publish it. Of what use is it,
many persons will say, to present to the world what is mainly a record
of weaknesses and failures? If I had any triumphs to tell; if I could
show how I had risen superior to poverty and suffering; if, in short, I
were a hero of any kind whatever, I might perhaps be justified in
communicating my success to mankind, and stimulating them to do as I
have done. But mine is the tale of a commonplace life, perplexed by
many problems I have never solved; disturbed by many difficulties I
have never surmounted; and blotted by ignoble concessions which are a
constant regret.

I have decided, however, to let the manuscript remain. I will not
destroy it, although I will not take the responsibility of printing it.
Somebody may think it worth preserving; and there are two reasons why
they may think so, if there are no others. In the first place it has
some little historic value, for I feel increasingly that the race to
which I belonged is fast passing away, and that the Dissenting minister
of the present day is a different being altogether from the Dissenting
minister of forty years ago.

In the next place, I have observed that the mere knowing that other
people have been tried as we have been tried is a consolation to us,
and that we are relieved by the assurance that our sufferings are not
special and peculiar, but common to us with many others. Death has