remembrance from the bottom of my heart which is like a deep well, worse luck! It is pleasant enough to dream, but still better to pin one's dreams down to paper! However, I am no visionary, but wide-awake, full of fun and clear-sighted, with no idle fancies in my head. I only tell what I have seen, done, and said; and for whom do I write? Certainly not for fame; for I am no fool, and know what I amount to, the Lord be praised!
I write for my grandchildren? Little will be left of all my scribblings in ten years, as the old woman is jealous of them, and burns whatever she can lay hands on. For whom, then? Why, for my other self, of course, for our good pleasure.—I am sure I should burst if I did not write! Truly I am not for nothing the child of my grandfather, who could not sleep unless he had put down on the edge of his pillow the number of flagons he had emptied. I feel I must talk, and here in Clamecy I have had my fill of word contests. I must break loose, like the fellow who shaved King Midas. I know my tongue runs away with me; and it would be at the risk of my neck if I were heard; but what's the odds! without its dangers life would be flat enough. I am like our big white oxen, and love to chew the cud of the day's food. How good it is to taste, feel, and handle all one has thought,
