Book Description

Excerpt from Recollections of a Varied Career It may seem presumptuous for a man of ordinary talent, such as I esteem myself, to write his Memoirs; the only good excuse, perhaps, being that his experiences have been out of the ordinary. I began to write simply with the view of leaving a record for my descendants; but as I wrote, it seemed to me that few lives had covered as wide a field as my own. My public experience, - as a soldier in time of war, a Member of Congress while great questions were under consideration, and a diplomat, also in war time, - would be hard to equal in variety; and my private life covers invention in important lines, and a business career, commencing as an employee and closing as the head of a large industrial establishment, perhaps the largest in Massachusetts that is owned by its managers. I venture to believe that a portion of the great public may be interested in my story; but if not, no harm is done, as the book will serve the purpose for which it was originally intended. 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.