翻出來這段兩年多以前的舊錄音。
It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a "superstitious hesitation" in lifing the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one. When I try to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present. The woman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy. A few impressions stand out vividly from the first years of my life, but "the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest". Besides, many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have lost their poignancy, and many incidents of vital importance in my early education have been forgotten in the excitement of great discoveries. In order, therefore, not to be tedious, I shall try to present in a series of schetches only the episodes that seem to me to be the most interesting and important.