IMPORTANT NOTICE
The following narrative is a veracious representation of my recollection of events and what I have to say about the character of persons and places is a veracious representation of my opinion of those persons and places, as in the following veracious sentence:
“Any person who questions my veracity is a filthy swine.”
Some quotations are exact. Most are approximations. None are deliberately misleading. I have changed the names and identifying characteristics of a few peripheral figures but most of the names given here are the names which I recall being used at the time.
One will not read far in Millbrook without encountering hyperbolic idioms and extended rhetorical metaphors. I have made a considerable effort to be factual but no effort at all to write my history in a plonking style.
The mental strain produced by attempting to separate style from content under such circumstances may be too much for some people.
I hope readers who find factual errors will write to me about them.
The chapter headings and quotations thereunder are taken from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain and are in the original order.
Philosophers are so far from rejecting the opinion of a continued existence upon rejecting that of our sensible perceptions, that tho’ all sects agree in the latter sentiment, the former, which is, in a manner, its necessary consequence, has been peculiar to a few extravagant skeptics; who after all maintained that opinion in words only, and were never able to bring themselves sincerely to believe it.
—David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature