CHAPTER XXII.
SAM BUCKLEY'S EDUCATION.
This narrative which I am now writing is neither more nor less than an account of what befell certain of my acquaintances during a period extending over nearly, or quite, twenty years, interspersed, and let us hope embellished, with descriptions of the country in which these circumstances took place, and illustrated by conversations well known to me by frequent repetition, selected as throwing light upon the characters of the persons concerned.

Episodes there are, too, which I have thought it worth while to introduce as being more or less interesting, as bearing on the manners of a country but little known, out of which materials it is difficult to select those most proper to make my tale coherent; yet such has been my object, neither to dwell on the one hand unnecessarily on the more unimportant passages, nor on the other hand to omit anything which may be supposed to bear on the general course of events.
Now, during all the time above mentioned, I, Geoffry Hamlyn, have happened to lead a most uninteresting, and with few exceptions prosperous existence.

I was but little concerned, save as a hearer, in the catalogue of exciting accidents and offences which I chronicle.

I have looked on with the deepest interest at the lovemaking, and ended a bachelor; I have witnessed the fighting afar off, only joining the battle when I could not help it, yet I am a steady old fogey, with a mortal horror of a disturbance of any sort.

I have sat drinking with the wine-bibbers, and yet at sixty my hand is as steady as a rock.
Money has come to me by mere accumulation; I have taken more pains to spend it than to make it; in short, all through my life's drama, I have been a spectator, and not an actor, and so in this story I shall keep myself as much as possible in the background, only appearing personally when I cannot help it.
Acting on this resolve I must now make my CONGE, and bid you farewell for a few years, and go back to those few sheep which James Stockbridge and I own in the wilderness, and continue the history of those who are more important than myself.