For many years my friends have insisted upon my putting in permanent form the incidents in my life which have interested them. It has been my good fortune to take part in history-****** meetings and to know more or less intimately people prominent in world affairs in many countries. Every one so situated has a flood of recollections which pour out when occasion stirs the memory. Often the listeners wish these transcribed for their own use.
My classmate at Yale in the class of 1856, John D. Champlin, a man of letters and an accomplished editor, rescued from my own scattered records and newspaper fiIes material for eight volumes.
My secretary has selected and compiled for publication two volumes since. These are principally speeches, addresses, and contributions which have appeared in public. Several writers, without my knowledge, have selected special matter from these volumes and made books.
Andrew D. White, Senator Hoar, and Senator Foraker, with whom I was associated for years, have published full and valuable autobiographies. I do not attempt anything so elaborate or complete. Never having kept a diary, I am dependent upon a good memory. I have discarded the stories which could not well be published until long after I have joined the majority.
I trust and earnestly hope there is nothing in these recollections which can offend anybody. It has been my object so to picture events and narrate stories as to illumine the periods through which I have passed for eighty-eight years, and the people whom I have known and mightily enjoyed.
C.M.D.
