Excerpt from The Iron Hunter

Cellini states that all men of whatsoever quality they be, who have done anything of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they are per sons of truth and honesty, to describe their life With their own hands, but they ought not to attempt so fine an enterprise until they have passed the age of forty. And so, he says, in a work like this there will always be found Occasion for natural bragging.

Guizot wrote the history of France after undertaking to tell it to his grandchildren as they sat about his knee.

When my friend, Emerson Hough, added his urging to that of my children and grandchildren, I first gave a serious thought to it. My father had a great prejudice against autobiographies. This he communicated to me congenitally.

I am not abnormally modest, I think, but I rebelled at the idea of writing about myself. It staged my ego too prominently.

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