child, so it still appears to me that to write an autobiography the
author must say _something_ about himself; but it is a great and very
popular _tour de force_ to quite avoid doing this, and all art of late
years has run to merely skilfully overcoming difficulties and avoiding
interesting _motives_ or subjects. It may be, therefore, that in days to
come, my book will be regarded with some interest, as a curious relic of
a barbarous age, and written in a style long passed away--

"When they sat with ghosts on a stormy shore,
And spoke in a tongue which men speak no more;
Living in wild and wondrous ways,
In the ancient giant and goblin days."

Once in my younger time, one of the most beautiful and intellectual women
whom I ever knew, Madame Anita de Barrera--(Daniel Webster said she was
beautiful enough to redeem a whole generation of blue-stockings from the
charge of ugliness)--once made a great and pathetic fuss to me about a
_grey hair_ which had appeared among her black tresses. "And what
difference," I said, "can one white hair make to any friend?" "Well,"
she replied, "I thought if I could not awaken any other feeling, I might
at least inspire in you veneration for old age." So with this work of
mine, if it please in naught else, it may still gratify some who love to
trace the footsteps of the past, and listen to what is told by one who
lived long "before the war."

Now for a last word--which involves the only point of any importance to
me personally in this preface--I would say that there will be certain
readers who will perhaps think that I have exaggerated my life-work, or
blown my own trumpet too loudly. To these I declare in plain honesty,
that I believe there have been or are in the United States _thousands_ of
men who have _far_ surpassed me, especially as regards services to the
country during the Civil War. There were leaders in war and diplomacy,
editors and soldiers who sacrificed their lives, to whose names I can
only bow in reverence and humility. But as it was said of the great
unknown who passed away--the _fortes ante Agamemnon_--"they had no poet,
and they died." These most deserving ones have not written their lives
or set themselves forth, "and so they pass into oblivion"--and I regret
it with all my soul. But this is no reason why those who did something,
albeit in lesser degree, should not chronicle their experiences exactly
as they appear to them, and it is not in human