The Oregonion

It may not be improper in the first Place to inform readers that I intend to present you from time to time, by the Help of this Blog, with a short Epistle which I presume will add somewhat to your Entertainment.

And since it is observed that the Generality of People, now a days, are unwilling either to commend or dispraise what they read until they are in some measure informed who or what the Author of it is, whether he be poor or rich, old or young, a Scollar or a Leather-Apron Man, &c., and give their Opinion on the Performance according to the Knowledge which they have of the Author's circumstances, it may not be amiss to begin with a short account of my past Life and present Condition, that the Reader may not be at a loss to judge whether or no my Lucubrations are worth his reading.

I was bound out apprentice, that I might no longer be a charge to my indigent mother, who was put to hard shifts for a living. My mother's master saw that she was taught needle-work, writing, and arithmetic, and observing that I took more than ordinary delight in reading ingenious books, he gave me the free use of his library, which though it was but small yet it was well chose, to inform the understanding rightly and enable the mind to form great and noble ideas.

I am an enemy to vice and a friend to virtue. I am of an extensive charity and a great forgiver of private injuries; a hearty lover of all good men, and a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power ... I have like-wise a natural inclination to observe and reprove the faults of others, at which I have an excellent faculty.

I now take up a resolution to do for the future all that lies in my way for the service of my fellow Oregonians.