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critics have the most unfortunate custom of discussing only men who are well known, men of whose existence they are absolutely sure. The result is that no one hitherto has taken the trouble to write the biography of the Unknown Man. I am not referring to the ordinary unknown person who may at any time be brought into the commonplace class of the known and the recognized. I mean the Unknown Man himself, the authentic Unknown Man whom nobody knows.

The critics, one and all, write only about the prominent, the illustrious, or at least about beings known to the police and listed in the directories. Far be it from them to waste ink for a man without a name—for a man who does not even possess one of those trivial pairs of names