My Boyhood 14+

🔖 "You ask me to give you some account of my life - how it was with me, and now in my seventy-sixth year I find myself in the mood to do so... It is mainly the life of a country man and a rather obscure man of letters, lived in eventful times indeed, but largely lived apart from the men and events that have given character to the last three quarters of a century. Like tens of thousands of others, I have been a spectator of...the activities - political, commercial, sociological, scientific - of the times in which I have lived. My life, like your own, has been along the by-paths rather than along the great public highways. I have known but few great men and have played no part in any great public events - not even in the Civil War which I lived through and in which my duty plainly called me to take part. I am a man who recoils from noise and strife, even from fair competition, and who likes to see his days...by some quiet, congenial occupation."