took part in. Now it is all over I wonder more and more at the
slightness of the hazard which suddenly placed me at such a period in
so strange an experience.

I am the son of a Lancashire gentleman who accumulated considerable
wealth in the cotton trade. He died when I was still a boy. I found
myself, when I came of age, the possessor of upwards of £80,000. Thus
I started in life as a man of fortune; but it is due to myself to say
that I took prompt and effectual measures to clear myself of that
invidious character. Not to mince matters needlessly, I ran through
that eighty thousand pounds in something short of four years. I was
not in the least "horsey"; my sphere was the gaieties of Paris and the
gaming-tables of Monte Carlo--a sphere which has made short work of
fortunes compared with which mine would be insignificant. The pace was
fast and furious; I threw out my ballast liberally as I went along,
and the harpies, male and female, who surrounded me, picked it up.
Bright and fair enough was the prospect as I started on the road to
ruin; gloomy the clouds that settled round me as I approached that
dismal terminus. Then, when too late, I began to regret my folly. I
seemed to wake as if from a dream, from a state of helpless
infatuation, in which my acts were scarcely the effect of my own
volition. The general out-look became decidedly uninviting.

About eleven o'clock one spring night of the year 1892, I was standing
close to the railings of the Whitworth Park in my native city of
Manchester, to whose dull provincial shades I had retired at the
enforced close of my creditable career. I remember that I was engaged
in wondering what on earth I could have done with all my money, the
only tangible return for which appeared to be an intimate and peculiar
knowledge of the French language and of certain undesirable phases of