It may seem absurd that I should be sitting here trying to writeabout myself in an age when only a mystery story has any chance asa best-seller. I can think of nothing about myself to distort intoany such popular fiction. If I tell anything it will be but aplain unvarnished account of how things really have happened, asnearly as I can possibly hold to the truth.First of all, I have noticed that most autobiographers begin withancestors. As a rule they start out with the purpose of linkingthemselves by blood and birth to some well-known family orpersonage. No doubt this is due to egotism, and the hazy,unscientific notions that people have about heredity. For my part,I seldom think about my ancestors; but I had them; plenty of them,of course. In fact, I could fill this book with their names if Iknew them all, and deemed it of the least worth.I have been told that I came of a very old family. A considerablenumber of people say that it runs back to Adam and Eve, althoughthis, of course, is only hearsay, and I should not like toguarantee the title. Anyhow, very few pedigrees really go back anyfarther than mine. With reasonable certainty I could run it backto a little town in England that has the same name as mine, thoughthe spelling is slightly altered. But this does not matter. I amsure that my forbears run a long, long way back of that, even--butwhat of it, anyhow?The earliest ancestor of the Darrow family that I feel surebelonged to our branch was one of sixteen men who came to NewEngland the century before the Revolutionary War. This Darrow,with fifteen other men, brought a grant from the King of Englandfor the town of New London, Conn. He was an undertaker, so we aretold, which shows that he had some appreciation of a good business,and so chose a profession where the demand for his services wouldbe fairly steady. One could imagine a more pleasant means oflivelihood, but, almost any trade is bearable if the customers aresure. This Darrow, or rather his descendants, seemed to forget thelavish gift of the King, and took up arms against England underGeorge Washington. So far as having an ancestor in theRevolutionary War counts for anything, I would be eligible to amembership of the D. A. R., although I would not exactly fit thisorganization, for, amongst other handicaps, I am proud of my rebelancestors, and would be glad to greet them on the street, shouldthey chance my way.But it is not for love of looking up my ancestry, or a desire tobrag, that I am setting all this down, but for a much more personalreason. All of it had an important bearing upon me, and shows themany, many close calls I had when I was casting about for anancestral line and yearning to be born. The farther back I go, themore unlikely it seems that I am really here, and I sometimes pinchmyself to make sure that it is not a dream; but I assume that I amI, and that I really came all the way from Adam, with all thevicissitudes of time and tide that are so entwined with mortallife.Did you, who read this, ever figure what a scant chance you had ofgetting here? If you did come from Adam, you must have hadmillions on millions of direct forbears, and, if one ancestor hadfailed to come into the combination, you would not be you, butwould be some one else entirely, if any one at all. So I do notallow myself to worry about the long-lost trail, but am contentwith thinking over the slight chance my father and mother had tomeet, and hence my own still lesser chance for life after I hadjumped all the hurdles between Adam and my parents.