The Queen of Sheba and my Cousin the Colonel by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

While Lynde is enjoying the refreshing sleep that easily overtook him / after supper, we will reveal to the reader so much of the young man's / private history as may be necessary to the narrative. In order to do / this, the author, like Deacon Twombly's mare, feels it indispensable to / back a little.

One morning, about three years previous to the day when Edward Lynde / set forth on his aimless pilgrimage, Mr. Jenness Bowlsby, the president / of the Nautilus Bank at Rivermouth, received the following letter from / his wife's nephew, Mr. John Flemming, a young merchant in New York --