Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Taken Alive by Edward Payson Roe
page 4 of 436 (00%)
ever-present consciousness that my writings have drawn around me a
circle of unknown yet stanch friends, who have stood by me
unfalteringly for a number of years. I should indeed be lacking if
my heart did not go out to them in responsive friendliness and
goodwill. If I looked upon them merely as an aggregation of
customers, they would find me out speedily. A popular mood is a
very different thing from an abiding popular interest. If one
could address this circle of friends only, the embarrassment
attendant on a certain amount of egotism would be banished by the
assurance of sympathetic regard. Since, from the nature of
circumstances, this is impossible, it seems to me in better taste
to consider the "author called Roe" in an objective, rather than
in a friendly and subjective sense. In other words, I shall try to
look at him from the public point of view, and free myself from
some predisposition in his favor shared by his friends. I suppose
I shall not succeed in giving a colorless statement of fact, but I
may avoid much special pleading in his behalf.

Like so many other people, I came from a very old family, one from
which there is good proof of an unbroken line through the Dark
Ages, and all ages, to the first man. I have never given any time
to tracing ancestry, but have a sort of quiet satisfaction that
mine is certainly American as far as it well can be. My
forefathers (not "rude," to my knowledge) were among the first
settlers on the Atlantic seaboard. My paternal and maternal
grandfathers were stanch Whigs during the Revolution, and had the
courage of their convictions. My grandmother escaped with her
children from the village of Kingston almost as the British
entered it, and her home was soon in ashes. Her husband, James
Roe, was away in the army. My mother died some years before I
DigitalOcean Referral Badge