immodest, may I say that the reader has really no idea
what a hero the world has possessed in the person of me, Hannibal
Trotter? It has been my misfortune never to be anything else. How
often have I sighed for an unheroic half-hour!

I was born a hero. Glory marked me for her own from the first hour of
my career. I wish she had let me alone. Had I captured a city, or
rescued a ship's crew, I could not have been made more of than I was for
the simple exploit of being a baby. Nobody else was thought of beside
me; everybody conspired to do me honour. A fictitious glory settled
upon me then, from which I have never escaped. They called me Hannibal.
I was not consulted, or I should have opposed the name. It confirmed
me in a false position. There was no chance of not being a hero with
such a name, and I was in for it literally before I knew where I was.

The day I first walked, General Havelock was a fool to me. I must have
been eighteen months at the time, but when the word went forth,
"Hannibal walks!" I was simply deafened by the applause which greeted
my feat. It wasn't much better when, at the very unprecocious age of
two, I gave vent to an inarticulate utterance which, among those who
ought to have known better, passed for speech. I assure you, reader,
for the next few months I had the whole family hanging on my lips. How
would you like your whole family hanging on your lips? But then you
weren't born a hero.

Well, it went on. My infancy was one sickening round of glory. Did I
build a house of bricks four courses high? Archimedes wasn't in it with
me. Did I sing a nursery rhyme to a tune all one note? Apollo was a
dabbler in music beside me. Did one of my first teeth drop out without
my knowing it? Casabianca on the burning deck couldn't touch me for
fortitude. Did I once and again chance to tell the truth? Latimer,
Ridley, George Washington, and Euclid might retire into private life at
once, and never be heard of again!

It was a terrific _role_ to have to keep up, and as I gradually emerged
from frocks into trousers, and from an easy-going infancy into an
anxious boyhood, the true nature of my affliction began to dawn upon me.
Hannibal Trotter, through no choice of his own, and yet by the
undoubted ordering of Fate, was a hero, and he must act as such. He
must, in fact, keep it up or give it up; and a fellow cannot lightly
give up the only _role_ he has.

In due time, after heroic ef