The name itself points to an artizan origin, but the sieve of centuries has filtered our blood clear of the last dust of the anvil, and it throbs in our veins with Heraclidean purity. When I remember the long list of Warriors, Statesmen, Scholars, and the immense army of USEMEN it has given to the world, I conceive that the world owes the name a debt of gratitude, and, being one of the creditors, I expect partial payment at least.
Our family is a very large one, being represented in almost every nation on the globe but its vast extent is a matter of pride, not reproach, with me. Smith coming down so alphabetically that I used to think, when a child, that, as father and myself only had John for our names, a great many Smiths, whose names were lost, had already lived, and used up the balance of the alphabet for their middle initials. Smith), was preceded by numerous Johns, only to be distinguished from each other by the middle initials. My father, grand and great grandfather, were all named John in fact we could ascend the family tree six squares, without getting out of the Johns and even the seventh, who was an H (H. You may have known some of the Smiths, but not the members of our immediate family. You smile you know me? No, I beg pardon, I have never had the honor of your acquaintance.
I will simply tell my story, and leave the self-bees to suck what honey they please out of it.Īh! I have at last found it.
To afford self-complacent comparisons to the conceited, to furnish evidences of their own ingenuity to the soi-disant original, and to give conscious improvement to the soberly studious, is a more difficult task than I can undertake. “I could have written that myself, if I had only thought of it.” Hence, often the most pleasant books to read are those that tell of simple things in such a way that you exclaim: The book must also possess an ingenuity of thought and expression that will make you conscious, to a flattering extent, of your own ingenuity in detecting it. If the persons told of are beneath you in morals or intellect, then it is pleasant to reflect on your own superiority.Īre they above you in these particulars? then you are pleased to associate with them, so to speak, and to assign to yourselves, in imagination, a similarity of conduct, under similar circumstances. This flattery, however, must not be the result of the author's effort, but your own. Why should you listen with the slightest attention to my history? How can I expect you to care any more for me and my affairs, than for anybody else and anybody else's affairs? What right have I to inflict upon you a recital of events, in no way connected with yourself, that three-fourths of you believe untrue, and that concerns parties you never saw and perhaps never will see? None, reader, none!Īll the attention you give must be entirely gratuitous, except what I shall gain by tickling the selfish side of your nature for I well know that you like or dislike a book in proportion as yourselves are flattered. I am, then, at your service, John- no, I cannot call my own name, it always sounds strange in my own mouth I'll hand you my card in a moment and while I am fingering nervously in my case for the best engraved one I reflect: AS THE usages of society generally require an introduction between strangers before communications of any moment can transpire, I hasten now to introduce myself, that the readers hereof, as yet strangers, but whom I hope before long familiarly to call “gentle” and “dear,” may acquire at least one element of interest in the narrative I propose to offer, namely, acquaintance with its subject-modesty forbids me to say hero.
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