Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station
will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.  To begin my life with
the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed 
and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night.  It was remarked that
the clock began to strike and I began to cry simultaneously.
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the
nurse, and by some sage women in the neighborhood who had taken a lively 
interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our
becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky
in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits;
both of these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all 
unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours of a Friday night.
I need say nothing here, on the first hand, because nothing can show
better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified 
by the result.  On the second branch of the question, I will only remark
that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I sas still a 
baby, I have not come into it yet.  But I do not at all complain of
having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in
the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.