Sinopsis

Nothing is so fatal to the telling of an anecdote as the prelude:—“I once
heard an amusing story,”&c., and it would be almost as unwise to begin a
biography by stating that its subject was a very interesting character. On
the other hand, perhaps I may frighten away readers by telling them at
starting, this simple truth, that I am about to write the history of a young
man of great promise, whose short life proved a miserable failure, who
terribly injured the cause he had most at heart, for which he gave his life, a
man of whom even his enemies said, when he had met his sad fate:—“Poor
fellow. He deserved it. But what a pity!”
If the steady and unflinching gaze of one human being u...