Shadow and Light / An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century

E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

A Fatherless Boy, Carpenter and Contractor, Anti-Slavery Lecturer, Merchant, Railroad Builder, Superintendent of Mine, Attorney-at-Law, County Attorney, Municipal Judge Register of United States Lands, Receiver of Public Monies for U. S., United States Consul to Madagascar—Prominent Race Leaders, etc. Washington, D. C. 1902. Copyright, 1902.

During the late years abroad, while reading the biographies of distinguished men who had been benefactors, the thought occurred that I had had a varied career, though not as fruitful or as deserving of renown as these characters, and differing as to status and aim. Yet the portrayal might be of benefit to those who, eager for advancement, are willing to be laborious students to attain worthy ends.
I have aimed to give an added interest to the narrative by embellishing its pages with portraits of men who have gained distinction in various fields, who need only to be seen to present the career of those now living as worthy models, and the record of the dead, who left the world the better for having lived. To enjoy a life prominent and prolonged is a desire as natural as worthy, and there have been those who sought to extend its duration by nostrums and drinking-waters said to bestow the virtue of perpetual life. But if to live in hearts we leave behind is not to die, to be worthy of such memorial we must have done or said something that blessed the living or benefited coming generations. Hence autobiography is the record, for books are as tombstones made by the living, but destined soon to remind us of the dead.
Trusting that any absence of literary merit will not impair the author's cherished design to impart a moral, should he fail to adorn a tale.
Little Rock, Ark., January, 1902.

It is seldom that one man, even if he has lived as long as Judge M. W. Gibbs is able to record his impressions of so many widely separated parts of the earth's surface as Judge Gibbs can, or to recall personal experiences in so many important occurrences.