As to whether this story shall or shall not see the light of publicity I leave to the discretion of my executor. I am resolved that in my time it shall remain my own secret. I am partly actuated to this course by a peculiar and constitutional sensitiveness to anything like ridicule; while for a man in my position, a sober, prosaic merchant, engaged in trade in London, to confess to belief in the supernatural, would not only subject me to a good deal of chaff, but might possibly, indeed I think it is highly probable that it would, do me a good deal of injury in my business. City life is a hard, stern struggle for existence. The City man is governed by immutable conventional laws, and woe betide anyone who transgresses them. Men engaged in business generally become slaves to custom. You must don a tall hat and frock coat; you must assume a smug respectability; you must go to church on Sunday; your name must appear occasionally in charitable lists; you must speak deferentially of your mayor and corporation; you must conform to all the traditions and customs of the City, as prescribed by the unwritten laws; you must periodically be seen at Guild dinners; your holidays must be taken at a fixed time, and be of a specified duration. In a word, ‘must’ may be said to be the text of your life. You must do this and mustn’t do that. And if you have the hardihood and boldness to set your face against the stern and fast rules to which you tacitly bind yourself when you become a City man, well then, all the worse for you. Now with a knowledge of these facts, which cannot be gainsaid, it will be understood why I have been so reluctant to make known the extraordinary incidents which I here note down for the interest of those who are curious in such things. But extraordinary as they are, I set them forth as matter of hard, solid, undeniable truth. Throughout my life I have taken ‘Truth’ as my watchword, as my father and grandfather did before me. It has been my proud boast, warranted by facts, that my word has been as good as my bond. And in all my dealings with men of many complexions of mind, no one could or would have thought of impugning my honour, my _bona fides_, or my veracity. The business in which I was brought up, after a course at a public school, and to which I succeeded on the death of my esteemed father, was a very old-established one, having been founded by my paternal grandfather and his brother at the beginning of the seventeenth century.