The Wise and Foolish Virgins among them carried ten lamps; and strangely enough, that number coincides with the number of stories in this volume. In five lamps no oil was poured, so that the lamps gave forth no light, but the remaining lamps were well filled and shed forth light on all around. Such may, I trust, be the case with my stories; some of them may to my readers appear dull and uninteresting, but in the remaining moiety I trust some gleams of pleasure may be found, which, if not shedding forth the electric rays of a Poe, may yet give forth enough intellectual light to cause the writer to be seen and appreciated by the public as one who has not wholly failed to use his pen to the pleasure of his indulgent readers. Probably my penchant for listening to stories wrung from unwilling guests is highly reprehensible; but I am sorry to say that my hobby has quite taken the bit between its teeth, and, instead of my riding and controlling, it has mastered me. Some of my friends, probably my truest friends, prophesy, and I must say with some grounds for their forecasts, that I stand a good chance of seeing the interior of a gaol--my crime that of divulging the secrets of persons whose brains I have used as a kind of mental sponge. These good friends regard me as an ogre, prowling over the country on wheels, and robbing those to whom I have given sanctuary and shown hospitality in my humble caravan home. Probably they are right; but why in these days of dearth of original and uncommon stories, should persons be allowed to carry such interesting narratives about with them in a dog-in-the-manger style, when by the exercise of a little ingenuity I am able to obtain their hoarded narratives, and use them for the public good? Surely the end justifies the means, from a literary point of view. The hypnotic seizure of tales untold is a simple art, and if any of my readers (those having secret family skeletons preferred) will call upon me, I will with pleasure show them how to hunt for a story. The hunter and the quarry only are needed; noisy hounds to worry the poor quarry are not required, the hunter does it all quietly and effectively by himself, just as that watchful assassin, the spider, interviews the interesting and toothsome fly. THE END. _Jarrod & Sons, Printers, Norwich, Yarmouth, and London._ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. Perceived typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.