future.

Let me explain. A year ago I had been a clerk in the Office of the Local
Government Board--a detested calling with a derisory stipend. It was all
that a University education (a second in Moderations and a third in
_Literae Humaniores_) had enabled me to win, and I stuck to it because I
possessed no patrimony and had no 'prospects' save one, which stood
precariously on the favour of an uncle--my mother's brother, Major-General
Allan Mclntosh, C.B. Now the General could not be called an indulgent
man. He had retired from active service to concentrate upon his kinsfolk
those military gifts which even on the wide plains of Hindostan had kept
him the terror of his country's foes and the bugbear of his own soldiery.
He had an iron sense of discipline and a passion for it; he detested all
forms of amusement; in religion he belonged to the sect of the Peculiar
People; and he owned a gloomy house near the western end of the Cromwell
Road, where he dwelt and had for butler, valet, and factotum a Peculiar
Person named Trewlove.

In those days I found my chief recreation in the theatre; and by-and-by,
when I essayed to write for it, and began to pester managers with
curtain-raisers, small vaudevilles, comic libretti and the like, you will
guess that in common prudence I called myself by a _nom de guerre_.
Dropping the 'Richardson,' I signed my productions 'George Anthony,' and
as 'George Anthony' the playgoing public now discusses me. For some
while, I will confess, the precaution was superfluous, the managers having
apparently entered into league to ensure me as much obscurity as I had any
use for. But at length in an unguarded moment the manager of the Duke of
Cornwall's Theatre (formerly the Euterpe) accepted a three-act farce.
It was poorly acted, yet for some reason it took the town. '_Larks in
Aspic_, a Farcical Comedy by George Anthony,' ran for a solid three
hundred nights; and before it ceased my unsuspecting uncle had closed his
earthly career, leaving me with seventy thousand pounds (the bulk of it
invested in India Government stock), the house in the Cromwell Road, and,
lastly, in sacred trust, his faithful body-servant, William John Trewlove.

Here let me pause to deplore man's weakness and the allurement of
splendid possessions. I had been happy enough in my lodgings in Jermyn
Street, and, thanks to _Larks in Aspic_, they were decently furnished.
At the prompting, surely, of some malignant spirit,