For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.
Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.
Yet, mad am I not-and very surely do I not dream.
But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul.
My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events.
In their consequences, these events have terrified-have tortured-have destroyed me.
Yet I will not attempt to expound them.
To me, they have presented little but horror-to many they will seem less terrible than baroques.
Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the commonplace-some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.
From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition.