Read "The Fatal Boots" by William Makepeace Thackeray online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Some poet has observed, that if any man would write down what has really / happened to him in this mortal life, he would be sure to make a good / book, though he never had met with a single adventure from his birth to / his burial. How much more, then, must I, who HAVE had adventures, most / singular, pathetic, and unparalleled, be able to compile an instructive / and entertaining volume for the use of the public.
I don't mean to say that I have killed lions, or seen the wonders of / travel in the deserts of Arabia or Prussia; or that I have been a very / fashionable character, living with dukes and peeresses, and writing my / recollections of them, as the way now is. I never left this my native / isle, nor spoke to a lord (except an Irish one, who had rooms in our / house, and forgot to pay three weeks' lodging and extras); but, as our / immortal bard observes, I have in the course of my existence been so / eaten up by the slugs and harrows of outrageous fortune, and have been / the object of such continual and extraordinary ill-luck, that I believe / it would melt the heart of a milestone to read of it -- that is, if a / milestone had a heart of anything but stone.