Excerpt from Three Score and Eleven: Being Addresses and Miscellaneous Writings, Clipped From Various Publications and Printed for Gratuitous Distribution Amongst Relatives, Friends and Those to Whom He Is Indebted for Similar Favors

Here we have the record of a life, spent for the most part amid the peaceful scenes of the county of Ulster, yet darting out on all sides into the world of active achievement: a life of seventy-one years along the cool sequestered ways, yet ever busy, full of variety and in constant touch with outside events that make up history. Autobiographical in the strict sense of the word, it is not; but consists of a stringing together on the slightest thread of chre nology of the writings and speeches of the author: an autobiogra phy of the intellect. Such a collection might be criticised as too egotistical, were it not made, as I understand, like Shakespeare's sugared sonnets, for distribution among private friends.

Beginning in college days, when the author was but in his twentieth year, with three oratioiis on subjects familiar to the youn g student; passing into early active life with its newspaper editorials on political tepics and events of the times; it terminates the period of young manhood with an ambitious and interesting lecture on the younger Vane. Then come lucubrations growing out of the civil war in which the author at its outset was a participant; and these are succeeded by a series of miscellaneous productions, which brings us to the culminating point of manhood - signalized, in this instance, by entrance upon official life. There are no speeches made in the Assembly of the State for the year 1868, of which our author was a member; but there is an interesting supply illustrative of his career in the forty-sixth Congress (79 including one on the counting of the electoral votes for President and vice-president, which well deserves and will reward perusal. We have, also, an inaugural address as Mayor of the city of Kingston and two messa ges to the Common Council. The volume closes with reminiscences of foreign travel - a recreation indulged in by our author after his retirement from public station.

It should be called to mind, that during this long period, that is.

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