text:  It is so painful to a lover of open-hearted sincerity that any indirect traits of vanity should even _seem_ to creep into records of profound passion; and yet on the other hand it is so impossible without an unnatural restraint upon the freedom of the narrative to prevent oblique gleams reaching the reader from such circumstances of luxury or elegance as did really surround my childhood that on all accounts I think it better to tell him from the first with the simplicity of truth in what order of society my family moved at the time from which this preliminary narrative is dated