Excerpt from The Life and Adventures of George Augustus Sala In these days, when almost everybody appears to be burning with the desire to let all the world know what he has been doing from the time of his birth downwards, it is not quite an easy matter to determine what title should most appropriately be bestowed on a narrative of a long career. I venture to think that of such titles as "Reminiscences," "Memories of the Past," "Fifty Years (more or less) of My Life," "Looking Back," and so forth, we have had enough and to spare. A goodly number of my admired contemporaries, living and dead, have published their autobiographies; and to these they have attached appellations, some of which it is very possible that I should have chosen myself; but, after long consideration, I determined to give to these volumes the name under which they are now submitted to the public - namely, my "Life and Adventures." As to the life, it has been mercifully prolonged to a period far more protracted than could reasonably be expected in the case of an individual who was a wretchedly sickly child, and who has led, in every sense of the term, the hardest of lives, in all kinds of climates, in most parts of the civilised world. Whether that life has been an adventurous one it must be left for my readers to determine. It is quite possible that I have unnecessarily amplified, to the extent of half-a-dozen pages, events which might well have been dismissed in as many lines; and that I have exaggerated beyond all rational measure things of very trifling moment. 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.