Without malice, without prejudice, judging only as one whose judgment errs, I leave this darkened path for a free road in the open, and so shall strive to tell as simply and sincerely as I may what only befell myself and those with whom I had been long associated. And if the pleasures that I now recall seem tinged with bitter, and if the gaiety was but a phase of that greater prison fever that burnt us all in the beleaguered city, still there was much to live for in those times through which I, among many, passed; and by God's mercy, not my own endeavor, passed safely, soul and body.