APPENDIX. 



said above I hesitated, fearing with potent reasons to 

 undertake a task above my capacities, knowing my 

 peculiarities not well-balanced for such a work, with 

 my prime leaping tendencies to skip over a letter in a 

 word, or words in a phrase, besides I had an idea that 

 those sketches were to be short and concise, two quali- 

 ties I am deprived of ; but amply gifted of two opposed 

 defects, prolixity and digressions at loss of sight. But 

 I found that I was laboring under a mistake, that it 

 was necessary to give the full understanding of what I 

 was at the age 8 or 10 to 20 or more, to compare what 

 I am at 85, the age of a young patriarch, as for the old 

 ones I do not think I shall never attain the age of 

 biblical Abraham, and I do not wish it even if I was 

 to have an Agar for helpmate when 175 years old, I 

 could not forget my Phanerogyne of the old times, be- 

 sides I am not constituted like Abraham was .... 



By dint of speaking of religious creed, Heaven and 

 its antipode Hell, priests, etc., it has reminded me of 

 an incident that happened nearly half a century ago. 

 An individual, with whom I was slightly acquainted, 

 told me that he had met a man who knew me well 

 who had told him that I was a knowing ! one, that I 

 had studied to be a priest ! You hear spriest ! Good 

 God ! if never since I was born, any body had studied 

 any more than I had to be enlisted in that corporation 



