HISTORIAN! you who celebrate bygones!You have explored the outward, the surface of the races—the life that has exhibited itself,You have treated man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers, and priests;But now I also, arriving, contribute something:I, an habitué of the Alleghanies, treat man as he is in the influences of Nature, in himself, in his own inalienable rights,Advancing, to give the spirit and the traits of new Democratic ages, myself, personally,(Let the future behold them all in me—Me, so puzzling and contradictory—Me, a Manhattan- ese, the most loving and arrogant of men;)I do not tell the usual facts, proved by records and documents,What I tell, (talking to every born American,) requires no further proof than he or she who will hear me, will furnish, by silently meditating alone;I press the pulse of the life that has hitherto seldom exhibited itself, but has generally sought con- cealment, (the great pride of man, in himself,)I illuminate feelings, faults, yearnings, hopes—I have come at last, no more ashamed nor afraid;Chanter of Personality, outlining a history yet to be,I project the ideal man, the American of the future.