Excerpt from Winter Evening Tales, Collected Among the Cottagers in the South of Scotland, Vol. 1 of 2 I have for these twenty years been convinced of the truth of the proverb, that a fool can best teach a wise man wit; and that it is, in fact, on the egregious misconduct of the thoughtless and foolish part of mankind that the wise and prudent calculate for their success; and from these that they take their lessons of perseverance and good management. It is on this principle that the following sheets are indited, that others may be warned from the rock on which I have split; I therefore conceal nothing, but relate uniformly the simple truth, though manifestly to my disadvantage. I have not written my life as a model to be copied, but as one to be avoided, and may those who laugh at my inconsistencies learn from them to steer a different course. There is one great evil under the sun, from which, if youth is not warned, their success in life will be frustrated, and their old age without comfort and without respect. From it my misfortunes are all to be traced, and from it I am suffering at this day. I look back on the days that are past, and am grieved. I can now see all my incongruities, and wonder at my inadvertency in not being able to correct them. 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.