Before that book was published, I used to lie awake at night and fancy how great and how grand a thing it would be for me to see a book with my name on the cover lying on Smith's bookstalls, and staring me in the face from the booksellers' windows. After it was published, I felt that I owed Messrs. Smith & Sons a deep debt of gratitude for refusing to take it, and my heart rejoiced within me greatly that the only booksellers who exhibited it lived principally in old back streets and half-finished suburban thoroughfares. [Illustration: THE HALL] Stay--I will go upstairs to my lumber room, I will open that box, I will dig deep down among the buried memories of the past, and I will find that book, and I will summon up my courage and ask the publishers of this volume to kindly allow the cover of that book to be reproduced here. It is only by looking at it as I looked at it that you will thoroughly appreciate my feelings on the subject. I have found the box, but my heart sinks within me as I try to open the lid. All my lost youth lies there. The key is rusty and will hardly turn in the lock. [Illustration: drawing by Geo. Hutchinson signed: Very sincerely yours, George R. Sims] So--so--so, at last! Ghosts of the long ago, come forth from your resting-places and haunt me once again. Dear me! dear me! how musty everything smells; how old, and worn, and time-stained everything is. A folded poster: 'GRECIAN THEATRE 'Mr. G. R. Sims will positively _not_ appear this evening at the entertainment held in the Hall.' Yes, I remember. I had been announced, entirely without my consent or knowledge, to appear at a hall attached to the Grecian Theatre with Mrs. Georgina Weldon, and take part in an entertainment. This notice was stuck about outside the theatre in consequence of my indignant remonstrance. My old friend Mr. George Conquest had, I need hardly say, nothing to do with that bill. Some one had taken the hall for a special occasion. I think it was something remotely connected with lunatics. [Illustration: GEORGE R. SIMS]