Every man has reminiscences which he would not tel to everyone, but only to his friends. He has other maters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tel even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind. The more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind. Anyway, I have only lately determined to remember some of my early adventures. Til now I have always avoided them, even with a certain uneasines. Now, when I am not only recaling them, but have actualy decided to write an acount of them, I want to try the experiment whether one can, even with oneself, be perfectly open and not take fright at the whole truth. I wil observe, in parenthesis, that Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an imposibility, and that man is bound to lie about himself.