"He's no longer your dear old superintendent," thought I.
Fifteen minutes passed, and Mr. Beattie showed no signs of ever having come back. But when the ship-master appeared on the upper deck he told us Mr. Beattie would soon be ready to show his face to us. And he was. We cheered him and hailed him; hats were taken off; handkerchiefs waved in the air; and the former superintendent of the Normal School responded to us, while a twelve-inch smile beamed on his countenance.
Saturday, March 19, 1910.—My short trip yesterday reminded me of our voyage to Lucena last Thanksgiving. The first thing I did immediately after breaking-my-fast was to go to my desk and take out from the lowest case the account of this trip which I wrote while we were sailing. I have read the thing through and I will gladly repeat it for you. It begins thus:
"On Thanksgiving afternoon the Normal debating team, on board of the steamer Lal-Loc, set out for Lucena."—There! I can't write it for you now. My brother is calling me. But I'll just say we won the debate and had a glorious time.
—Victoriano Yamzon.
II. Autobiography and Memoirs
Distinction between autobiography and memoirs
Although the words "autobiography" and "memoirs" are often used interchangeably, the meanings differ somewhat as journal and diary; that is, an autobiography is always written to be read by a public, large or small; memoirs are sometimes secret, like those of Mirabeau when on his mission to Prussia. The two forms are both, however, personal accounts by the writer of his own doings and sayings as well as of the doings and sayings of others connected with him in the same events.
Gibbon has used the word memoirs as a title for what we generally call his autobiography; but critics consider the term "memoirs" strictly as signifying a record of events put down within a limited time in the author's life—or a record of important events that he can "remember," selected out of a long life. Memoirs in the first sense are usually written by persons of large affairs, like Prince von Metternich in the French-Austrian crisis, or Mme. de Staël-Holstein during her ten years of exile, or the Italian poet Silvio Pellico while serving his decade of imprisonment for taking part in the Carbonari movements. Many of the writers other than English seem to try to exclude the personal element from memoirs; though Catherine II of Russia in her account of her life as Grand Duchess is straightforward and intimate enough. Frederick the Great, too, in his memoirs of his military and political campaigns has succeeded in delineating quite exactly his own character as conceived of by others; while Charles V in his "Autobiographical Leaves" (which are memoirs) has revealed to the world an entirely new side of himself.