I.

The sapling, green and tender, yields readily to wind and sun and the hand of the trainer; the grown tree resists the storm, and 'tis well with it if it be not torn up by the roots; the aged trunk, dried to the core, spreads out its branches and perishes. This is human life.

At first, all wonder and curiosity, we are moulded by surrounding circumstances, which often affect our after lives, as colors laid at the root of bulbous plants are said to transmit their tints to the blossom; next comes the age of knowledge, when reason struggles with passion, and is not always the victor; lastly, the decay, when passion is extinct, and we live on a little longer on our memories, and then drop into dust.

When I formed the resolution to set down the events that have agitated my life, and marked it out with a strange difference from the lives of other men, I did not see the difficulties that beset my confession on the very threshold. They grew upon me by degrees. The more I reflected on it, the more reluctance I felt at the thought of writing about things which no man would believe. Looking back upon them from the verge of the grave, which can not now be long untenanted, they seem, even to me, more like fantastic dreams or wild allegories than real occurrences. How then can I expect others to accept as true a narration which contradicts their experience and convictions, and which I can not elucidate myself? I can explain nothing; I can only relate what has happened to me, careful not to deviate a hair's breadth into exaggeration. It would be little to the purpose to say that truth is stranger than fiction, an axiom which every body admits as a loose generality, but which nobody will consent to apply in the instances by which it is illustrated. I can attest, out of my own knowledge, that truth often presents inexplicable phenomena, and is sometimes irreconcilable with the laws of nature. But who will credit me, I said, when I narrate such things?

Again and again I approached the subject, and as often recoiled from the execution of my design. It was only by repeated efforts that I summoned up sufficient moral courage to overcome the fear and shame that overwhelmed me, from the apprehension that I should be regarded as one who had been himself deceived, or who was practicing a deception on others. A patient examination of the motives upon which my resolution was founded, determined me, however, to brave all such risks, in the assurance that they who, exercising their literal judgment, as they have a right to do, might see reason for doubting my veracity, could not fail, upon the whole, to draw a practical moral from my revelations. For the rest, I must appease my own scruples by declaring that I have herein written nothing that is not strictly true, and related exactly as it occurred.