Excerpt from James Freeman Clarke, 1892: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence It is just fifty years to-day since I preached my first sermon in Bernard Whitman's church in Waltham. I shall keep the anniversary by beginning the sketch of my life, which my friends have thought may be interesting. I have no remarkable events or adventures to record. But I have lived in an important period; have known many eminent men and distinguished women; have seen great changes in social life, in religious opinion, in private morals and public manners. If I can succeed in making a few suggestive pictures, or memory sketches, it may be a gratification to my children and friends, and possibly contribute matter for the future historian of this period. In looking back to the time, fifty years ago, when I was about to begin my work in life, that which first strikes me is this: I was then twenty-three; and that past twenty-three years seemed to me more eventful and longer than the subsequent fifty appear now. I believe I felt older then than I do now. I seemed to myself to have gone through the round of human experience. I had read and thought, studied and meditated, mingled in society, had friendships with men and women. 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.