of the most dignified, honorable sort; he was
a goldsmith, and his guild, as you know, were the bankers and
international clearance house for people, king and nobles. Besides, it
is stated on good authority that there was a great scandal wherein the
goldsmith's wife was mixed up in an intrigue with the noble King
Edward; so we learn that even in trade the Caskodens were of honorable
position and basked in the smile of their prince. As for myself, I am
not one of those who object so much to trade; and I think it
contemptible in a man to screw his nose all out of place sneering at
it, while enjoying every luxury of life from its profits.

This goldsmith was shrewd enough to turn what some persons might call
his ill fortune, in one way, into gain in another. He was one of those
happily constituted, thrifty philosophers who hold that even
misfortune should not be wasted, and that no evil is so great but the
alchemy of common sense can transmute some part of it into good. So he
coined the smiles which the king shed upon his wife--he being
powerless to prevent, for Edward smiled where he listed, and listed
nearly everywhere--into nobles, crowns and pounds sterling, and left a
glorious fortune to his son and to his son's son, unto about the
fourth generation, which was a ripe old age for a fortune, I think.
How few of them live beyond the second, and fewer still beyond the
third! It was during the third generation of this fortune that the
events of the following history occurred.

Now, it has been the custom of the Caskodens for centuries to keep a
record of events, as they have happened, both private and public. Some
are in the form of diaries and journals like those of Pepys and
Evelyn; others in letters like the Pastons'; others again in verse and
song like Chaucer's and the Water Poet's; and still others in the
more pretentious form of memoir and chronicle. These records we always
have kept jealously within our family, thinking it vulgar, like the
Pastons, to submit our private affairs to public gaze.

There can, however, be no reason why those parts treating solely of
outside matters should be so carefully guarded, and I have determined
to choose for publication such portions as do not divulge family
secrets nor skeletons, and which really redound to family honor.

For this occasion I have selected from the memoir of my worthy
ancestor and namesake, Sir Edwin Caskoden--grandson of the goldsmith,
and Master of the Danc