“Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,
    I fed on poisons, till they had no power,
    But were a kind of nutriment.”

The earliest event I remember is being presented with two cents by one of the “Committee” visiting the school.  And if I could stand two cents in my tender infancy, don’t you suppose I can stand your penny-a-lining now I am grown up?  I may have been spoiled, or I may not have been worth much to begin with; but the mischief was all done before you ever heard of me.  Confine yourself to facts:  dismiss conjectures.  State actions:  shun motives.  Give results:  avoid causes, if you would insure confidence in your sagacity.

But all this will I forgive and forget, if you will not tell me to stop writing. That I cannot and will not do.  You may iterate and reiterate, that the public will tire of me.  I am sorry for the public, but it is strong and will be easily rested.  Sorry?  No, I am not; I am glad.  I should like to pay back a part of the weariness which the public has inflicted on me in the shape of lectures, lessons, sermons, speeches, customs, fashions.  Why should it have the monopoly of fatiguing?  Minorities have their rights as well as majorities.  The spout of a tea-kettle is not to be compared, in point of bulk, to the tea-kettle, but it puts in a claim for an equal depth of water, and Nature acknowledges the claim.  I cannot think of reining in yet.  I have but just begun.  And everything is so interesting.  Nothing is isolated.  Nothing is insignificant.  Everything you touch thrills.  It does not seem to matter much what you look at:  only look long enough, and a life, its life, starts out.  You see that it has causes and consequences, dependencies, bearings, and all manner of social interests; and before you know it, you have become involved in those interests and are one of the family.  For the time, you stake all on that issue, and fight to the death.  As soon as that is decided, and you stop to take breath a moment, something else comes equally interesting and seeming equally important, and again your lance is in rest.  When it comes to the quantities of morals, there isn’t much difference between one thing and another.  And you ask me to fold my hands and sit still!  Not I. One of my youthful maxims was, “Do something, if it’s mischief”; and I intend to follow it, especially the condition.  I promise to do the best I can, but I shall do it.  I will never write for the sake of writing, but I will say my say.  I have not been rumbling underground all my life, to find a volcano at last, and then let it be choked up after a single eruption.  There are rows of blocks standing around the walls of my workshop, waiting to be chiselled.  They won’t be Apollos,—­but even Puck is a Robin Goodfellow, since,

    “In one night, ere glimpse of morn,
    His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
    That ten day-laborers could not end.”