I had had, and vividly enjoyed an entire life, according to the
measure that is meted out to many, perhaps I may say to most men.
But I felt myself ready for another! And--thanks this time also to
a woman--I have _had_ another, _in no wise_ less happy, in some
respects, as less chequered by sorrows--more happy than the first! I
am in better health too, having outgrown apparently several of the
maladies which young people are subject to!
Of this second life I am not now going to tell my readers anything.
"What I remember" of my first life may be, and I hope has been, told
frankly without giving offence or annoyance to any human being. I
don't know that the telling of the story of my second life would
necessarily lead me to say anything which could hurt anybody. But
mixed up as its incidents and interests and associations have been
with a great multitude of men and women still living and moving and
talking and writing round about me, I should not feel myself so
comfortably at liberty to write whatever offered itself to my memory.
Ten years hence, perhaps ("Please God, the public lives!" as a
speculative showman said), I may tell the reader, if he cares to hear
it, the story of my second life. For the present we will break off
here.
But not without some words of parting kindness--and shall we say,
wisdom!--from an old man to readers, most of whom probably might be
his sons, and many doubtless his grandsons.
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