"What can justify one in addressing himself to the general public as if it were his private correspondent?" asks Oliver Wendell Holmes. He then answers his own question by stating that "there are at least three sufficient reasons," and proceeding to give them.

I wish I could with satisfaction to myself offer any one of those three reasons for the existence of this little book. But, I cannot venture to say that I have "a story to tell which everybody wants to hear;" neither have I "been shipwrecked, or been in a battle, or witnessed any interesting event that I can tell anything new about." It is needless to add that I have not been hugged by a bear or scalped by an Indian. I do not presume to assert that I can "put in fitting words any common experiences not already well told;" and so I must assign the third reason, which permits me "to tell anything I like, provided I can so tell it as to make it interesting."

I cling to this third reason; it embodies the only plea I can put forth. I have tried to make my story interesting; it would gratify me deeply to believe that I have succeeded.

"What shall we do with our boys?" is a question frequently put to the body politic through the medium of the newspapers in the dull season. My experience has convinced me that the question is a useless one. You may train up and control your boys to a certain age; you may make them a present of as good an education as you can afford; you may lay down plans for their future; you may find niches for each one to fill; you may fondly hope that each one in his turn will quietly drop into his niche; that they will live and work together, and in course of time become a help and comfort to you in your declining years.

But will they do so? I have other sons besides Frank, and they have found niches for themselves quite other than the ones I had intended for them when years ago I said to myself "What shall I do with my boys?" Now they have sons and daughters of their own, who will no doubt soon become objects of the same inquiry in their turn.

Frank's erratic wanderings from the niche I had designed for him are recorded in these pages. I have written them in the hope that they may be, if not very interesting, at least useful to young fellows who, like him, cannot rest content in the parent nest, however well-feathered or cotton-wooled it may be; but who also, like Frank, seem to be impelled by some subtle influence, or by—