The history of the circumstances about to be related began many years ago-or so it seems in these days. It began, at least, years before the world being rocked to and fro revealed in the pause between each of its heavings some startling suggestion of a new arrangement of its kaleidoscopic particles, and then immediately a re-arrangement, and another and another until all belief in a permanency of design seemed lost, and the inhabitants of the earth waited, helplessly gazing at changing stars and colours in a degree of mental chaos. Its opening incidents may be dated from a period when people still had reason to believe in permanency and had indeed many of them-sometimes through ingenuousness, sometimes through stupidity of type-acquired a singular confidence in the importance and stability of their possessions, desires, ambitions and forms of conviction.