and lastly in 1912. The reader will, I trust, pardon any repetition
noted, an occasional return to a subject previously touched upon
being unavoidable because of the long intervals between some of
the letters.

It seems to me that these letters picture our author more faithfully
than could any portrait drawn by another. Thomas Bailey Aldrich
has said that no man has ever yet succeeded in painting an honest
portrait of himself in an autobiography, however sedulously he may
have set about it; that in spite of his candid purpose he omits
necessary touches and adds superfluous ones; that at times he cannot
help draping his thought, and that, of course, the least shred
of drapery is a disguise. But, Aldrich to the contrary
notwithstanding, I believe Mr. Burroughs has pictured himself
and his environment in these pages with the same fidelity with
which he has interpreted nature. He is so used to "straight seeing
and straight thinking" that these gifts do not desert him when his
observation is turned upon himself. He seems to be a shining
example of the exception that proves the rule. Besides, when
Aldrich pronounced that dictum, Mr. Burroughs had not produced
these sketches.

This record was not written with the intention of its being
published as it stood, but merely to acquaint me with the facts
and with the author's feelings concerning them, in case I should
some day undertake his biography. But it seems to me that just
because it was so written, it has a value which would be considerably
lessened were it to be worked over into a more finished form. I have
been willing to sacrifice the more purely literary value which would
undoubtedly grace the record, were the author to revise it, that I