While Lynde is enjoying the refreshing sleep that easily overtook him
after supper, we will reveal to the reader so much of the young man's
private history as may be necessary to the narrative. In order to do
this, the author, like Deacon Twombly's mare, feels it indispensable to
back a little.

One morning, about three years previous to the day when Edward Lynde set
forth on his aimless pilgrimage, Mr. Jenness Bowlsby, the president of
the Nautilus Bank at Rivermouth, received the following letter from his
wife's nephew, Mr. John Flemming, a young merchant in New York--

NEW YORK, May 28,1869.

MY DEAR UNCLE: In the course of a few days a friend of mine, Mr. Edward
Lynde of this city, will call upon you and hand you a note of
introduction from myself. I write this to secure for him in advance the
liking and interest which I am persuaded you will not be able to
withhold on closer acquaintance. I have been intimate with Edward Lynde
for twelve years or more, first at the boarding-school at Flatbush, and
afterwards at college. Though several years my junior, he was in the
same classes with me, and, if the truth must be told, generally carried
off all the honors. He is not only the most accomplished young fellow I
know, but a fellow of inexhaustible modesty and amiability, and I think
it was singularly malicious of destiny to pick him out as a victim, when
there are so many worthless young men (the name of John Flemming will
instantly occur to you) who deserve nothing better than rough treatment.
You see, I am taking point-blank aim at your sympathy.