(_With acknowledgments to Mr. G. R. Sims._) Being a few Foretastes of the Great Feast to follow. Peering backward into the gulf of time as I sit in my grandfather's chair and listen to the tick of my grandfather's clock I see a smaller but more picturesque London, in which I shot snipe in Battersea Fields, and the hoot of the owl in the Green Park was not yet drowned by the hoot of the motor-car--a London of chop-houses, peg-top trousers and Dundreary whiskers.... I remember the Derby of Caractacus and the Oaks of Boadicea. Once more I see "Eclipse first and the rest nowhere." I remember "OLD Q." and OLD PARR, ARNOLD of Rugby and KEATE of Eton, CHARLES LAMB and General WOLFE, CHARLES JAMES FOX and MRS. LEO HUNTER; the poets BURNS and TENNYSON, the latter of whom gave me my name of "Dagonet." I think back to a London of trim-built wherries and nankeen pantaloons, when _The Times_ cost as much as a dozen oysters, which everyone then ate. I remember backing myself in my humorous way to eat sixty "seconds" in a minute and winning the bet. I look back to the time when BETTY, the infant ROSCIUS, and GRIMALDI, and NELL GWYNN and COLLEY CIBBER and ROBSON and FECHTER and PEG WOFFINGTON were the chief luminaries of the histrionic firmament. I remember the _debuts_ of CATALANI and MALIBRAN and PICCOLOMINI and Broccolini and Giulio Perkins. I remember the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the erection of DRAYTON'S "Polyolbion," the removal of the Wembley Tower, and the fight between BELCHER and the gas-man. I often think of the battles of Waterloo and Blenheim and Culloden and Preston Pans and Cannae. I often think of next Sunday with a shudder. I see COUNT D'ORSAY careering along Kensington Gore in his curricle; Lord MACAULAY sauntering homeward to Campden Hill, and Lord GEORGE SANGER driving home to East Finchley behind two spanking elephants. I see Jerusalem and Madagascar and North and South Amerikee... * * * * * It was on the eve of the anniversary of the battle of Cressy that I first drew breath on August 25th, "somewhere" in the Roaring Forties. The date was well chosen, for my maternal great-great-grandfather had amassed a considerable fortune by the manufacture of mustard, and the happy collocation was destined to bear conspicuous fruit in after years. Good old HERODOTUS, my favourite reading in my school-days, tells us how old-world potentate, in order to discover which was the most ancient language in the world, had two children brought up in strict seclusion by dumb nurses, with the result that the first word they uttered was "Beck," the Phrygian for bread. Strange to say this was not my first linguistic effort, which was, as a matter of fact, the Romany word "bop." Although I shall probably write my autobiography again a few details about my ancestry are pardonable at this juncture.