Everything is seen from a different standpoint; everything takes its color from the mind of the beholder.
I am moved to recall what I can of my early days, what I thought and felt, that grown people may have a better understanding of children and do more for their happiness and development.

I see so much tyranny exercised over children, even by well-disposed parents, and in so many varied forms,--a tyranny to which these parents are themselves insensible,--that I desire to paint my joys and sorrows in as vivid colors as possible, in the hope that I may do something to defend the weak from the strong.

People never dream of all that is going on in the little heads of the young, for few adults are given to introspection, and those who are incapable of recalling their own feelings under restraint and disappointment can have no appreciation of the sufferings of children who can neither describe nor analyze what they feel.

In defending themselves against injustice they are as helpless as dumb animals.

What is insignificant to their elders is often to them a source of great joy or sorrow.
With several generations of vigorous, enterprising ancestors behind me, I commenced the struggle of life under favorable circumstances on the 12th day of November, 1815, the same year that my father, Daniel Cady, a distinguished lawyer and judge in the State of New York, was elected to Congress.