He is so used to "straight seeing
and straight thinking" that these gifts do not desert him when his
observation is turned upon himself. He seems to be a shining
example of the exception that proves the rule. Besides, when
Aldrich pronounced that dictum, Mr. Burroughs had not produced
these sketches.
This record was not written with the intention of its being
published as it stood, but merely to acquaint me with the facts
and with the author's feelings concerning them, in case I should
some day undertake his biography. But it seems to me that just
because it was so written, it has a value which would be considerably
lessened were it to be worked over into a more finished form. I have
been willing to sacrifice the more purely literary value which would
undoubtedly grace the record, were the author to revise it, that I
may retain its homely, unstudied human value.
I have arranged the autobiographical material under three
headings: Ancestry and Family Life, Childhood and Youth, and
Self-Analysis.--C. B.]
ANCESTRY AND FAMILY LIFE
I am, as you know, the son of a farmer. My father was the son of
a farmer, as was his father, and his. There is no break, so far
as I know, in the line of farmers back into the seventeenth century.
There was a Rev.
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