While paying the penalty of a last misdeed, I resolved that no more of life’s precious years should be spent in sowing to the wind and that my life’s sun should not set in eternal night; and I have been able to keep my resolution. In the awful moments of lonesomeness in the prison cell, I conceived the idea of publishing my life history in so far as I could make it interesting to the financial world and general public. Many hours of solitude, while others slept, I devoted to rummaging through the past in search of facts, dating them from the innocent days of my young manhood and resurrecting them from period to period, until I succeeded in compiling a life history which, I sincerely trust, will prove not only a helper to those who have the care of great sums of money devolving upon them, but will also be accepted by those tempted to depart from the path of rectitude as a warning not to be lightly regarded.

I have endeavored to be accurate in my treatment of each part of this history, and if there shall be discovered an error here and there, kindly, dear reader, attribute it to a lapse of memory. I kept no record of events, for in leading the life of a transgressor it is not conducive to safety; so I have been forced to depend solely upon my memory, which, as it dwelt on the past, soon became alive again with old scenes. Acts long forgotten returned to me clothed as they were more than twoscore years ago, and I found myself living over the bright days, the dark days, the days of wealth, and the days of poverty. I started to write a small book, but facts crowded upon me until I have been enabled to issue a volume of no mean proportions.

G.M. WHITE.