Statement

The Iron Hunter

STATEMENT

Cellini states that all men of whatsoever quality they be, who have done anything of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life with their own hands; but they ought not to attempt so fine an enterprise until they have passed the age of forty. And so, he says, in a work like this there will always be found occasion for natural bragging.

Guizot wrote the history of France after undertaking to tell it to his grandchildren as they sat about his knee.

When my friend, Emerson Hough, added his urging to that of my children and grandchildren, I first gave a serious thought to it. My father had a great prejudice against autobiographies. This he communicated to me congenitally.

I am not abnormally modest, I think, but I rebelled at the idea of writing about myself. It staged my ego too prominently.

“The fact is,” said Mr. Hough, “you unconsciously possess such a Gargantuan ego that you think you must conceal it by a false show of modesty. If you were really modest, you would not think of your ego, but would as willingly write of yourself as of another.”

Others supported him. And even with it all I feel like explaining the reason why I consented to try.

I confess I am glad to have my Marco Polo and Abbe Huc and my Stephenson and Roosevelt and Sidney. And I would set great store by it if I had a life of my own grandfather.

Probably the decision to set down what follows grew from the belief that the opportunities of life in America are as numerous as they ever were. If I, as an average American, and that is all I claim to be or wish to be, can have done the things that engaged my existence, others may also have enlivened hope.

With gratefulness to God for His mercy and protection and providence and for all the wondrous blessings I have enjoyed, I submit, as incomplete, a sketch of some of the work of my life.

I view the future for my country, my family, my friends and myself cheerfully and hopefully, in the light of God’s love and His merciful direction.

CHASE S. OSBORN.

Sault de Sainte Marie, Michigan,

December, 1918.