Page:Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist (1844).djvu/25



the ancient historians a practice prevailed which may be described thus: Whenever they wrote the lives of men, they explained, in limine, who those men were. This is in all their works manifest. They may have been right: they may have been wrong: it is not proposed to dive to any very great depth with the view of discovering the absolute necessity for the pursuit of this course: it is sufficient for the world to know that they held such explanation to be essential to the perfect knowledge of the very men whose characters they portrayed, and as the practice is extremely convenient, it may not, even in this age, be deemed incorrect—however admirable originality may in itself be—to follow their example, by explaining at once, who Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist was.

Assuming then the correctness of the course prescribed to be admitted, it now becomes proper to state that Sylvester Sound was the only son of Horatio Sound, M.D.; that the doctor's lady departed this life very soon after Sylvester's birth; that the doctor himself survived her several years; that a circumstance—of which the particulars will be dwelt upon anon—not only caused the loss of his practice, but eventually broke his heart; and that, up to the period of his death, Sylvester—for a reason which the doctor himself never explained—was educated by him and lived constantly with him.