EDITOR'S PEEFACE. 



Though having no special knowledge of the .subject 

 treated of in this book, I have endeavoured to see 

 it safe through the press for the sake of its writer, 

 who was a very old friend of mine. The son of 

 an actor who stood high in the estimation of the 

 past generation of playgoers, but who died while his 

 children w^ere young, Henry Paul Prescott was very 

 early thrown upon the world to shift for himself 

 Gifted with much natural taste and feeling for art, 

 he tried as a boy to carve out a career for himself 

 among the painters. But before starvation overtook 

 him, he was fortunate enough to find shelter in the 

 Excise. Mr. Wood, long the chairman of the Board, 

 who had known his father and always took a kindly 

 interest in the fortunes of Prescott and his elder 

 brother, providing places for both in the service over 

 which he presided. 



It was while serving in the lower grades of the 

 Inland Revenue hierarchy that my friend acquired the 



