1 hope you will collect your journals and pencilings, and let us have them in the shape of a book." VI Extract from the reply: — " You caused me to smile when you spoke about writing the history of my life. You know book writers, in order to be successful, must be popular. If the President of the United States was to write his autobiography, every body would read it, on account of the author. But when a man in the ordinary walks of life attempts it, his book must run the risk of anything more than an ordinary reception. Another objection, my style probably would not suit the sentimental reader. There would not be flourish enough about it, no beautiful display of emotions on leaving my native shore, no romantic description of the broad expanse of ocean; no detail of catching a dolphin with a vivid admiration of his dying hues; no capturing a Mother Cary's Chicken with a pinhook; (the bird's name you would be sure to have in Latin,) then the dreadful effect it had on the minds of the superstitious sailor, who esteem the death of a Mother Cary's Chicken ominous of some fearful catastrophe; nor any paroxysm of delight on beholding Albion for the first time j besides a catalogue of first impressions, which always looks to me to be very flat." Throughout the narrative I have not been personal, except only where individuality required it.
Perhaps I should apologize to the reader for the abbreviated words, which in conversation would rank under the category of profane, and hesitated some time before I felt willing to insert them in their present form; but upon conclusion, felt that as I have aimed at the verbatim in all colloquies and conversations; the reader would pass lightly over in this narrative what would on any other occasion have been considered an error. The story of a smuggler I give just as I had it on my journal, as I have also done with everything of which I was not an eyewitness. I may have omitted quotation marks where they properly belonged, which I hope may be excused as an oversight.
Egotism in an autobiography is unavoidable, and if on the whole, the style meets the approbation of the reader, then the highest wishes and expectations have been realized by the author. S. F. H.