"
The ghost of the person condemned to walk the earth in a biography glides
into a public library, and goes to the shelf where his mummied life lies
in its paper cerements. I can see the pale shadow glancing through the
pages and hear the comments that shape themselves in the bodiless
intelligence as if they were made vocal by living lips.
"Born in July, 1776!" And my honored father killed at the battle of
Bunker Hill! Atrocious libeller! to slander one's family at the start
after such a fashion!
"The death of his parents left him in charge of his Aunt Nancy, whose
tender care took the place of those parental attentions which should have
guided and protected his infant years, and consoled him for the severity
of another relative."
--Aunt Nancy! It was Aunt Betsey, you fool! Aunt Nancy used to--she has
been dead these eighty years, so there is no use in mincing matters--she
used to keep a bottle and a stick, and when she had been tasting a drop
out of the bottle the stick used to come off the shelf and I had to taste
that. And here she is made a saint of, and poor Aunt Betsey, that did
everything for me, is slandered by implication as a horrid tyrant.
"The subject of this commemorative history was remarkable for a
precocious development of intelligence. An old nurse who saw him at the
very earliest period of his existence is said to have spoken of him as
one of the most promising infants she had seen in her long experience.
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