Within the Capes

Within the Capes
By HOWARD PYLE New York International Association of Newspapers and Authors 1901
Copyright, 1885, By CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. NORTH RIVER BINDERY CO. PRINTERS AND BINDERS NEW YORK
TO HIS FRIEND ALFRED LEIGHTON HOWE THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR

WITHIN THE CAPES.
CERTAIN members of Captain Tom Granger’s family have asked him, time and time again, why he did not sit down and write an account of those things which happened to him during a certain period of his life.
These happenings, all agree, are of a nature such as rarely fall to the lot of any man, crowding, as they did, one upon the heels of another, so that in two years’ time more happened to Tom Granger than happens to most men in a lifetime.
But Captain Granger has always shaken his head, and has answered that he was no writer and that a pen never did fit nicely betwixt his stiff fingers, as Mrs. Granger can tell them if they will ask her.
Beside this, he has hitherto had his affairs to look after, so that he may be able to leave behind him enough of the world’s goods to help his children and his children’s children easily along the road that he himself found not over smooth.
Now, however, he has given up much of his business to the care of his sons, who are mostly men well on in years, with families of their own, and who are discreet in the management of things. Therefore, having much more leisure time upon his hands than he has ever had in his life before, he will undertake to do as he has been asked, and to write a plain, straightforward story of his adventures. This he does with much diffidence, for, as I have said, he is no very good hand with the pen and the ink-horn. The story may be told in a rough way; nevertheless, I believe that many of those that read it will think well of it, having a certain tenderness for the writer thereof.
I am furthermore inclined to thus take upon myself the transcribing of the history of these things, because that Captain Tom Granger is coming fast to the ending of his life; and, though his latter days may be warm and sunny, like a late Indian summer, there are those yet to come in a few years who will not have the chance to hear of these things from his own lips. Therefore, as there has been much gossip about certain adventures that befell him, I would rather that they should learn of them under mine own hand than from hearsay. Truly, things get monstrously twisted in passing from mouth to mouth, and by the time that the story of these doings has passed down through three or four generations, the old gentleman might be turned into a pirate and a murderer, for all that I know, which would be a pretty state of affairs.