TO THE READER. As the following "Reminiscences" were written as occasion offered, or opportunity allowed, and often after intervals of many months, it may happen that a sentiment is repeated, or an incident retold. Should this be found to be the case, the indulgence of "the Gentle Reader" is earnestly craved, and, it is hoped, will be as generously accorded. I MUST carry those who do me the honour of reading this story of a boyhood back many years, and ask them to accompany me through a past far distant now; so remote that I seem to have lived at least three or four lives since then. When some of the persons in whom it is my wish to interest my readers, many or few, entered on the great mystery of life, railways were unknown, and steamboats had just begun to plough the waters, and to toss the foam from their whirling paddles. Since then the world has been turned upside down, and it is not possible for any one, even the laudator temporis acti, to say that the former days were better than these. Yet, in many things, those who lived, and moved, and had their being in those good old times were not unlike the present. Heirs of all the preceding ages, they had the same passions, were as pleasure-seeking, as violent, as jealous, as proud, as envious, and as fond of money as any of their successors who are privileged to live in the closing years of B |