On calling lately at the house of a friend who was indisposed, I found him in his study wrapped in a dressing gown, and turning over, with pensive air, the leaves of a dust-brown manuscript, which lay open before him on the table.

"What have you got here? have you turned author, or are you revising and correcting for another?" said I, arresting the arm of my friend, as he was in the act of removing his papers.

"I have been," he replied, "looking over a cobwebbed memoir of my own life, which has been one of no ordinary vicissitude. It is a melancholy pleasure to retrace the path of existence through a faithful narrative of its events; and compare ourselves with ourselves in different stages of our progress. I have not glanced at this moth-eaten record for upwards of twenty years, and feel, after closing it, as if I had been conversing with the dead; but let me place it on its shelf again, and we will talk on more agreeable subjects."

"Not till I have possession," said I, darting forwards and seizing the manuscript. An intimacy of long standing pleaded excuse for this abrupt measure. I took home my booty, read the memoir; and felt so deeply interested in a story which I knew to be true, that I entreated permission to give it to my printer. "I thought, at one time, of publishing it," replied my friend, "but afterwards relinquished the idea. The experience of one man never guides another. All people like to purchase their own; but provided you change every name of place or person which might inflict a wound in any breast, you may do as you please with my tale of other times."

I promised, and have performed, so let no Reader, who happens to have a taste either for genealogy or geography, seek acquaintance with any character or locality introduced in the following pages.

The Editor.