I shall not put mine altogether in the back of the book, but I shall throw them around promiscuously through it. I have worked in a barber shop sixty-two years, and have read from five to six hours a day during those years. During all that time I have had the benefit derived from the conversations of many of the best men in the country and the most cultivated minds, no small blessing, I can assure you; and a part of what I have heard I have written in this book. "'Tis pleasant to see one's name in print. A book's a book, although there is nothing in't." BYRON. And, as Rufus Choate said, there is no immortality but a book, I thought I would try my hand at it. I Sketch of the Life of John M. Todd WAS born in Durham, Maine, at the southwest bend of the Androscoggin River, when I was quite young, and I was not consulted in regard to the event. It was very near where Congressman Dingley was born, and had he consulted me on the tariff question, I should have told him it was too high for the benefit of the Durham farmers. It was on the eighth day of April, 1821, so I am told, when I was born, but I do not recollect the day. Father has informed me that it was a backward spring and there were four feet of snow on the ground on that eventful morn. He walked two miles and a half upon the crust and snow and it bore him every step. He went after a nurse, for he and mother had concluded I was worth raising. I was the seventh child, and mother has told me that I was the most unwelcome child she ever brought into the world. Mother said I was handsome, and when mothers say it we must take it for granted that it is so. My parents were very poor before I was born, but I cared nothing for poverty. Mother has informed me since that she had nothing to cover me with but a blanket and that had holes in it, and I could see through it, as the old woman said when her tub bottom fell out. Father had been a sea captain, and in the War of 1812 he was driven ashore by an English man-of-war and lost all be pos |