le drew their first
breath there, and not one of them was like you in character or fate. You
were born in some year of our Lord. Thousands upon thousands date from
the same year, and each went his own way,--

"One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the peaceful sea!"

All this is nothing and accounts for nothing, yet this is all. Whether
you were susceptible of calmness or deeply turbulent,--whether you were
amiable, or only amiably disposed,--whether you were inwardly blest and
only superficially unrestful, safely moored even while tossing on an
unquiet sea,--what you thought, what you hoped, how you felt, yes, and
how you lived and loved and hated, they do not know and cannot tell. A
biographer may be ever so conscientious, but he stands on the outside of
the circle of his subject, and his view will lack symmetry. There is but
one who, from his position in the centre, is competent to give a fair
and full picture, and that is your own self. A few may possess
imagination, and so partially atone for the disadvantages of position;
but, ten hundred thousand to one, they will not have a chance at your
life. You must die knowing that you are at the mercy of whoever can hold
a pen.

Unless you take time by the forelock and write your biography yourself!
Then you will be sure to do no harm, inasmuch as no one is obliged to
read your narrative; and you may do much good, because, if any one does
read it and become interested in you, he will have the pleasant
consciousness of living in the same world with you. When he drives
through your street, he can put his head out of the carriage-window and
stand a chance of seeing you just coming in at the front gate. Also, if
you write your biography yourself, you can have your choice as to what
shall go in and what shall stay out. You can make a discreet selection
of your letters, giving the go-by to that especial one in which you
rather--is there such a word as spooneyly?--offered yourself to your
wife. Every word was as good as the Bank of England to her, for to her
you were a lover, a knight, a great brown-bearded angel, and all
metaphors, however violent, fell upon good ground. But to the people who
read your life you will be a trader, a lawyer, a shoemaker, who pays his
butcher's bills and looks after the main chance, and the metaphors,
emptied of their fire, but retaining their form, will seem incongruous,
not to say ridiculous. I do not say that your wife's lov