He began, "I, Paul Chapin, of 203 Perry Street, New York City, hereby confess that -" The telephone rang.

"Some sing low, some sing higher. . . ." The journalist hereby confesses that he succumbed to a wave of the sentimentality he had been dreading for weeks.

So as a professional spectator of too many catwalks and too many prizefights, I hereby confess that I feel better about myself after a designer takes his or her bow than after some poor boxer has been counted out by a grim-faced referee.

"I hereby confess I sort of borrowed a matchbook from that office," he admitted.

His letter, dated March 4, 2006, begins this way: "I, Anthony Casso, hereby confess to have personally participated, as part of a three-man team, that shot and killed Eddie Lino in Brooklyn's Gravesend section.

That said, I hereby confess to feeling disappointed over Senator John Kerry's failure to home in hard on one of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years - namely the Bush administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy.

I hereby confess that I was the last drama critic in New York to catch Jackie Mason's act on Broadway - a full six months after the comedian's opening night.

I hereby confess that I murdered my mother by giving her an overdose of medinal on Novem her 18, 195-.

As First Speaker for the Belt Political Section, I hereby confess that two Belt ships have trespassed on United Nations property.

I hereby confess to writing deathless prose, on occasion-and even immortal verse, now and then.