Excerpt from Retrospections of an Active Life, Vol. 1 The title of the work here submitted to the public has seemed to my publishers to require some explanation. I prefer to ex plain rather than to change it. I could not dignify it with the title of Reminiscences. That would be paying quite too great a compliment to the memory of any man of my age, however unimpeachable his character. 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.