Excerpt from A Stepson of Fortune: The Memories, Confessions and Opinions of Henry Murray Nathaniel hawthorne prefaced one of his earlier volumes by the statement that it was the work of the obscurest man of letters in America. I will preface this volume by saying that it is the work of the unluckiest scribbler - regarded merely as a scribbler - ou which the all-beholding eye of day has ever looked. That is the one statement this book will contain to which I will suffer no challenge. It is my one point of pride - perhaps, of vanity - ou which I would quarrel with my dearest friend or the wife of my bosom. You and I will come to no good of each other's society unless that fact is accepted as a fact. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.