122 MEMOIRS OF MY NAMESAKE. 



hold — in the sense of the last verse of the Gospel of St. John. The 

 beauty of many of these fleeting thoughts, poetry is powerless to 

 adequately express ; the depth of others would appall philosophy, 

 while the pain of most, if constantly visible or too frequently appre- 

 ciable, would drive humanity mad! 



And yet the biography of an ordinary individual is a literary effort 

 of uncommon occurrence. The "diary" is a numerous vade mecum, 

 but it requires circumstances which lift it from the category of the 

 ordinary to give it the dignity of publication. If the story of a life 

 comparatively private, has been published at all, I am not aware of 

 the fact. This, however, is not saying much, for what a celebrated 

 Irish member of Parliament once said to a boaster might be readily 

 applied to me: "What you don't know, sir, would fill volumes." 



"Then," it may be asked, "why is this attempt made to acquire 

 distinction for the narrative of a life comparatively private ? " Frankly, 

 because it is not copied from a diary ; because it is by no means, an 

 "o'er true tale," but fills out a skeleton of perfect truth with an adi- 

 pose of imagination ; because it is made the vehicle of facts, fancies 

 and philosophy long clamoring for expression in printer's ink, and 

 because said philosophy is thought to be something of a novelty, at 

 least in its presentation to the public. 



Every person of thoughtful and observant habit who has noted or felt 

 the effect of " man's inhumanity to man," believes that a remedy for 

 the crying evil might be found in adequate description, and dreams 

 that, some day, when the avenging spirit moves him, he will give the 

 world a piece of his mind in such a graphic style and with such 

 glowing colors that vice will vanish and heart-burnings will be felt 

 no more forever ! It is this benevolent breath — this divine afflatus — 

 that now fans the latent fire of my sympathetic soul! I would pic- 

 ture the events of one simple life, unmask many hidden abuses, and 

 by exposure, end them. If my readers will have patience with me, 

 and permit, good-naturedly, many erratic rambles into adjacent ter- 

 ritory, I will promise them glimpses of a region not often explored 

 before, but which Dickens would have trodden had he lived. 



Would to God he had, for only such a Hercules as he was could 

 slay the mosters which infest it ! 



Right here, on the fertile subject of breaking strange ground, or 

 roaming, fancy free, through "fresh fields and pastures new," there is 



