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Of the manner of my escape from that Stygian lake with all its monotony and despair of outlook, I have perhaps said more than enough in print already, and in any case it would here be quite out of place. But of the time during which I in common with many thousands of my fellows in London endeavoured to live respectably, and rear a family by honest toil, I feel free to speak, and if incidentally I can throw a few side-lights, humorous or pathetic, as the case may be, upon the strenuous lives led by small London tradesmen, I shall be proportionately glad.

It only remains that while in the following pages fiction finds no place, no real names are given for the most obvious reasons.

Frank T. Bullen.

Millfield,

Melbourn.

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With the causes of my first plunge into the troubled waters of trade at the early age of nine I have here nothing to do. It must suffice to say that one spring morning, over forty years ago, I entered the emporium of an oil, colour, and Italian warehouseman (to quote from his fascia), in what was then known as Kensal New Town, a neighbourhood that had long been of unsavoury reputation, but was emerging into something like respectability by the aid of sundry long rows of jerry-built, stucco-ornamented houses, the inhabitants of which tried hard to forget the former appellation of their chosen abiding-place, and dated their letters, when they wrote any, from Upper Westbourne Park.