Excerpt from The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Vol. 1 The early readers of The Atlantic Monthly will permit me, as an acquaintance of long standing, to speak freely with them from its pages, and, as it were, face to face. They have met me Often: some times in my avowed personality; some times under a transparent mask, which might be a shield, but could not be a dis guise. 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.