FIRST BRANCH--MYSELF
I have kept one secret in the course of my life. I am a bashful man.
Nobody would suppose it, nobody ever does suppose it, nobody ever did
suppose it, but I am naturally a bashful man. This is the secret which I
have never breathed until now.
I might greatly move the reader by some account of the innumerable
places I have not been to, the innumerable people I have not called upon
or received, the innumerable social evasions I have been guilty of, solely
because I am by original constitution and character a bashful man. But I
will leave the reader unmoved, and proceed with the object before me.
That object is to give a plain account of my travels and discoveries in
the Holly-Tree Inn; in which place of good entertainment for man and
beast I was once snowed up.
It happened in the memorable year when I parted for ever from Angela
Leath, whom I was shortly to have married, on making the discovery that
she preferred my bosom friend. From our school-days I had freely
admitted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far superior to myself; and,
though I was grievously wounded at heart, I felt the preference to be
natural, and tried to forgive them both. It was under these circumstances
that I resolved to go to America--on my way to the Devil.
Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin, but
resolving to write each of them an affecting letter conveying my blessing
and forgiveness, which the steam-tender for shore should carry to the post
when I myself should be bound for the New World, far beyond recall,--I
say, locking up my grief in my own breast, and consoling myself as I
could with the prospect of being generous, I quietly left all I held dear, and
started on the desolate journey I have mentioned.