am happy to number among my warmest personal friends at the present
day. There are also a good many persons of middle age, not in Toronto
only, but scattered here and there throughout various parts of Ontario,
who will have no difficulty in recalling my name as that of one of
their fellow-students at Upper Canada College. The name of my late
uncle, Richard Yardington, is of course well known to all old residents
of Toronto, where he spent the last thirty-two years of his life. He
settled there in the year 1829, when the place was still known as
Little York. He opened a small store on Yonge Street, and his
commercial career was a reasonably prosperous one. By steady degrees
the small store developed into what, in those times, was regarded as a
considerable establishment. In the course of years the owner acquired a
competency, and in 1854 retired from business altogether. From that
time up to the day of his death he lived in his own house on Gerrard
Street.

After mature deliberation, I have resolved to give to the Canadian
public an account of some rather singular circumstances connected
with my residence in Toronto. Though repeatedly urged to do so, I
have hitherto refrained from giving any extended publicity to those
circumstances, in consequence of my inability to see any good to
be served thereby. The only person, however, whose reputation can be
injuriously affected by the details has been dead for some years. He
has left behind him no one whose feelings can be shocked by the
disclosure, and the story is in itself sufficiently remarkable to be
worth the telling. Told, accordingly, it shall be; and the only
fictitious element introduced into the narrative shall be the name of
one of the persons most immediately concerned in it.

At the time of taking up his abode in Toronto--or rather in Little