"I have kept one secret in the course of my life. I am a bashful man. Nobody would suppose it nobody ever does suppose it nobody ever did suppose it but I am naturally a bashful man. This is the secret which I have never breathed until now.

I might greatly move the reader by some account of the inmumerable place I have not been to the innumerable people I have not called upon or received the innumerable social evasions I have been guilty of solely because I am by original constitution and character a bashful man. But I will leave the reader unmoved and proceed with the object before me."