CHAPTER I.


My reasons for writing an autobiography.--That a man knows the history
of his own life better than a biographer can know it.--Frankness and
reserve.--The contemplation of death.

My principal reasons for writing an autobiography are because I am the
only person in the world who knows enough about my history to give a
truthful account of it, and because I dread the possibility of falling
into the hands of some writer who might attempt a biography with
inadequate materials. I have already been selected as a subject by two
or three biographers with very friendly intentions, but their
friendliness did not always ensure accuracy. When the materials are not
supplied in abundance, a writer will eke them out with conjectural
expressions which he only intends as an amplification, yet which may
contain germs of error to be in their turn amplified by some other
writer, and made more extensively erroneous.

It has frequently been said that an autobiography must of necessity be
an untrue representation of its subject, as no man can judge himself
correctly. If it is intended to imply that somebody else, having a much
slighter acquaintance with the man whose life is to be narrated, would
produce a more truthful book, one may be permitted to doubt the validity
of the inference. Thousands of facts are known to a man himself with
reference to his career, and a multitude of determinant motives, which