Read "The Way of all Flesh" by Samuel Butler online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
And now I must bring my story to a close.
The preceding chapter was written soon after the events it records -- that is to say in the spring of 1867. By that time my story had been written up to this point; but it has been altered here and there from time to time occasionally. It is now the autumn of 1882, and if I am to say more I should do so quickly, for I am eighty years old and though well in health cannot conceal from myself that I am no longer young. Ernest himself is forty-seven, though he hardly looks it.