It is out of my power now to stand between it and the American public: all I can do is to rescue it from unauthorized mutilations and make the best of a jejune job.
At present, of course, I am not the author of The Irrational Knot.
Physiologists inform us that the substance of our bodies (and consequently of our souls) is shed and renewed at such a rate that no part of us lasts longer than eight years: I am therefore not now in any atom of me the person who wrote The Irrational Knot in 1880.

The last of that author perished in 1888; and two of his successors have since joined the majority.

Fourth of his line, I cannot be expected to take any very lively interest in the novels of my literary great-grandfather.
Even my personal recollections of him are becoming vague and overlaid with those most misleading of all traditions, the traditions founded on the lies a man tells, and at last comes to believe, about himself _to_ himself.

Certain things, however, I remember very well.

For instance, I am significantly clear as to the price of the paper on which I wrote The Irrational Knot.