Warning!

Mark Twain said he admired an older journalist he knew who wasn't going to "inflict" his memoirs on the public. "If there is anything more uncalled for, it is one of those tearful, blubbering, long-winded "valedictories" when a man who has been annoying the public for years, cannot take leave of them without sitting down to cry. He feels that the country is saved. His satisfaction over it, something enormous."

When Twain asked the admired writer why he was going quietly, he replied, "I am journalistically dead, at present, ain't I?"

"Yes"

"Well, wouldn't you consider it disgraceful in a corpse to sit up and comment on the funeral?"

Knowing that I risk being perceived as a self-serving, egotistical, and disgraceful corpse, I inflict my memoir on you.