Life is too short to make any other use of it. Besides, I owe too much to my fellow men, to my opportunities, to my country, to my God and to myself, to make any other use of the present occasion.
Since I am to speak to you of some of the important lessons of my life, it may be in order to give you some account of my ancestry. It is something to one's credit to have had an ancestry that one need not be ashamed of. One of the poets said, while talking to a select party of aristocracy:
Depend upon it, my snobbish friend,
Your family line you can't ascend
Without good reason to apprehend
You'll find it waxed at the farther end
With some plebeian vocation;
Or, what is worse, your family line
May end in a loop of stronger twine
That plagued some worthy relation.