How very little does the amateur, dwelling¹ at home at ease, comprehend the labours and perils² of the author, and, when he smilingly skims the surface of a work of fiction, how little does he consider the hours of toil³, consultation⁴ of authorities, researches in the Bodleian, correspondence with learned and illegible⁵ Germans — in one word, the vast scaffolding that was first built up and then knocked down, to while away an hour for him in a railway train! Thus I might begin this tale with a biography of Tonti — birthplace, parentage, genius probably inherited from his mother, remarkable⁶ instance of precocity⁷, etc — and a complete treatise⁸ on the system to which he bequeathed his name. The material is all beside me in a pigeon-hole, but I scorn to appear vainglorious⁹. Tonti is dead, and I never saw anyone who even pretended to regret him; and, as for the tontine system, a word will suffice for all the purposes of this unvarnished narrative¹⁰.

A number of sprightly¹¹ youths (the more the merrier) put up a certain sum of money, which is then funded in a pool under trustees; coming on for a century later, the proceeds are fluttered for a moment in the face of the last survivor¹², who is probably deaf, so that he cannot even hear of his success — and who is certainly dying, so that he might just as well have lost. The

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