ibbing. The ancient prejudice about the solar truth broke
down, therefore, in that instance; and who knows but Sun _senior_ may
be detected, now that our optical glasses are so much improved, in
similar practices? in which case he may have only been 'keeping his
hand in' when operating upon that one feature of the mouth. The rest
of the portrait, we all agree, does credit to his talents, showing
that he is still wide-awake, and not at all the superannuated old
artist that some speculators in philosophy had dreamed of his
becoming.

As an accompaniment to this portrait, your wish is that I should
furnish a few brief chronological memoranda of my own life. _That_
would be hard for me to do, and _when_ done, might not be very
interesting for others to read. Nothing makes such dreary and
monotonous reading as the old hackneyed roll-call, chronologically
arrayed, of inevitable facts in a man's life. One is so certain of the
man's having been born, and also of his having died, that it is dismal
to lie under the necessity of reading it. That the man began by being
a boy--that he went to school--and that, by intense application to his
studies, 'which he took to be _his_ portion in this life,' he rose to
distinction as a robber of orchards, seems so probable, upon the
whole, that I am willing to accept it as a postulate. That he
married--that, in fulness of time, he was hanged, or (being a humble,
unambitious man) that he was content with deserving it--these little
circumstances are so naturally to be looked for, as sown broadcast up
and down the great fields of biography, that any one life becomes, in
this respect, but the echo of thousands. Chronologic successions of
events and dates, such as these, which, belonging to the race,
illustrate nothing in the individual, are as wearisome as they are
useless.

A better plan will be--to detach some single chapter from the
experiences of childhood, which is likely to offer, at least, this
kind of value--either that it will record some of the deep impressions
under which my childish sensibilities expanded, and the ideas which at
that time brooded continually over my mind, or else will expose the
traits of character that slumbered in those around me. This plan will
have the advantage of not being liable to the suspicion of vanity or
egotism; for, I beg the reader to understand distinctly, that I do not
offer this sketch as deriving any part of what interest it may have
from myself, a