he will describe them in his own person. When his experience
fails, he will retire from the position of narrator; and his task
will be continued, from the point at which he has left it off, by
other persons who can speak to the circumstances under notice from
their own knowledge, just as clearly and positively as he has
spoken before them.

Thus, the story here presented will be told by more than one pen,
as the story of an offence against the laws is told in Court by
more than one witness--with the same object, in both cases, to
present the truth always in its most direct and most intelligible
aspect; and to trace the course of one complete series of events,
by making the persons who have been most closely connected with
them, at each successive stage, relate their own experience, word
for word.

Let Walter Hartright, teacher of drawing, aged twenty-eight years,
be heard first.



II


It was the last day of July. The long hot summer was drawing to a
close; and we, the weary pilgrims of the London pavement, were
beginning to think of the cloud-shadows on the corn-fields, and
the autumn breezes on the sea-shore.

For my own poor part, the fading summer left me out of health, out