{"product_id":"2940014068505","title":"The Story of my Life","description":"It may seem absurd that I should be sitting here trying to write\u003cbr\u003eabout myself in an age when only a mystery story has any chance as\u003cbr\u003ea best-seller.  I can think of nothing about myself to distort into\u003cbr\u003eany such popular fiction.  If I tell anything it will be but a\u003cbr\u003eplain unvarnished account of how things really have happened, as\u003cbr\u003enearly as I can possibly hold to the truth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFirst of all, I have noticed that most autobiographers begin with\u003cbr\u003eancestors.  As a rule they start out with the purpose of linking\u003cbr\u003ethemselves by blood and birth to some well-known family or\u003cbr\u003epersonage.  No doubt this is due to egotism, and the hazy,\u003cbr\u003eunscientific notions that people have about heredity.  For my part,\u003cbr\u003eI seldom think about my ancestors; but I had them; plenty of them,\u003cbr\u003eof course.  In fact, I could fill this book with their names if I\u003cbr\u003eknew them all, and deemed it of the least worth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have been told that I came of a very old family.  A considerable\u003cbr\u003enumber of people say that it runs back to Adam and Eve, although\u003cbr\u003ethis, of course, is only hearsay, and I should not like to\u003cbr\u003eguarantee the title.  Anyhow, very few pedigrees really go back any\u003cbr\u003efarther than mine.  With reasonable certainty I could run it back\u003cbr\u003eto a little town in England that has the same name as mine, though\u003cbr\u003ethe spelling is slightly altered.  But this does not matter.  I am\u003cbr\u003esure that my forbears run a long, long way back of that, even--but\u003cbr\u003ewhat of it, anyhow?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe earliest ancestor of the Darrow family that I feel sure\u003cbr\u003ebelonged to our branch was one of sixteen men who came to New\u003cbr\u003eEngland the century before the Revolutionary War.  This Darrow,\u003cbr\u003ewith fifteen other men, brought a grant from the King of England\u003cbr\u003efor the town of New London, Conn.  He was an undertaker, so we are\u003cbr\u003etold, which shows that he had some appreciation of a good business,\u003cbr\u003eand so chose a profession where the demand for his services would\u003cbr\u003ebe fairly steady.  One could imagine a more pleasant means of\u003cbr\u003elivelihood, but, almost any trade is bearable if the customers are\u003cbr\u003esure.  This Darrow, or rather his descendants, seemed to forget the\u003cbr\u003elavish gift of the King, and took up arms against England under\u003cbr\u003eGeorge Washington.  So far as having an ancestor in the\u003cbr\u003eRevolutionary War counts for anything, I would be eligible to a\u003cbr\u003emembership of the D. A. R., although I would not exactly fit this\u003cbr\u003eorganization, for, amongst other handicaps, I am proud of my rebel\u003cbr\u003eancestors, and would be glad to greet them on the street, should\u003cbr\u003ethey chance my way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut it is not for love of looking up my ancestry, or a desire to\u003cbr\u003ebrag, that I am setting all this down, but for a much more personal\u003cbr\u003ereason.  All of it had an important bearing upon me, and shows the\u003cbr\u003emany, many close calls I had when I was casting about for an\u003cbr\u003eancestral line and yearning to be born.  The farther back I go, the\u003cbr\u003emore unlikely it seems that I am really here, and I sometimes pinch\u003cbr\u003emyself to make sure that it is not a dream; but I assume that I am\u003cbr\u003eI, and that I really came all the way from Adam, with all the\u003cbr\u003evicissitudes of time and tide that are so entwined with mortal\u003cbr\u003elife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDid you, who read this, ever figure what a scant chance you had of\u003cbr\u003egetting here?  If you did come from Adam, you must have had\u003cbr\u003emillions on millions of direct forbears, and, if one ancestor had\u003cbr\u003efailed to come into the combination, you would not be you, but\u003cbr\u003ewould be some one else entirely, if any one at all.  So I do not\u003cbr\u003eallow myself to worry about the long-lost trail, but am content\u003cbr\u003ewith thinking over the slight chance my father and mother had to\u003cbr\u003emeet, and hence my own still lesser chance for life after I had\u003cbr\u003ejumped all the hurdles between Adam and my parents.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47156152336624,"sku":"2940014068505","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940014068505_p0.jpg?v=1763600016","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940014068505","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}