I was born in the town in Lynn, Massachusetts, upon the twenty-
second day of February, in the year 1855. Unlike most writers of
similar memoirs, I shall cast no aspersions upon the indigent by
stating that my parents were poor but honest. They were poor _and_
honest, as indeed, so far as I have been able to ascertain, have
been all the Quibbles since the founder of the family came over on
the good ship _Susan and Ellen_ in 1635, and, after marrying a
lady's maid who had been his fellow passenger, settled in the
township of Weston, built a mill, and divided his time equally
between selling rum to the Indians and rearing a numerous progeny.

My father, the Reverend Ezra Quibble, was, to be sure, poor enough.
The salary that he received as pastor of his church was meagre to
the degree of necessitating my wearing his over-worn and discarded
clerical vestments, which to some extent may account for my otherwise
inexplicable distaste for things ecclesiastical. My mother was
poor, after wedlock, owing to the eccentricity of a parent who was
so inexorably opposed to religion that he cut her off with a shilling
upon her marriage to my father. Before this she had had and done
what she chose, as was fitting for a daughter of a substantial
citizen who had made a fortune in shoe leather.