The biography opens with a prefatory explanation contrasting the subject’s playful autobiographical lapses with the biographer’s reliance on letters, diaries, and eyewitness testimony. It then traces family origins and early domestic life, recounting ancestral stories, the parents’ courtship, and the father’s optimistic but often ill-fated business moves and relocations. The account emphasizes the mother’s influence on her son’s humor and manner, and situates his childhood within its regional and social contexts. It follows his schooling and early professional attempts, showing how these formative experiences shaped the sensibilities that later informed his public and literary career.