Excerpt from Recollections of a Lifetime, or Men and Things I Have Seen: In a Series of Familiar Letters to a Friend, Historical, Biographical, Anecdotical, and Descriptive Inform the reader as to the origin of these vol umes, and the leading ideas of the author in writing them. It is necessary to state, how ever, that although the work was begun two years since - as indicated by the date of the first of these Letters, and while the author was residing abroad - a considerable portion of it has been written within the last year, and since his return to America. This state ment is necessary, in order to explain several passages which will be found scattered through its pages. 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.