His narrative of the growth of an industrial under taking in the West of England, carried on for nearly 250 years by the same family, may, I trust, be of interest as revealing some of the difficulties that beset men engaged in business in the days preceding the intro duction of steam power, railways, steamships, telegraph, telephones, and the many other inventions that have brought all the nations of the world into such close touch with one another. The men of the old time had great difficulties to contend with their lives were much quieter and simpler than ours, their interests more limited, and they knew little of the excitement which seems to be inseparable from modern life. These men were Quakers, and those who lived in the seventeenth century must have shared in the bitter persecutions of those days. I am much indebted to Dr. R. Hingston Fox and to Mr. Francis Were for valuable information in regard to the Were and Fox families, and to Mr. Arthur L. Humphreys for useful hints and for kind assistance in the work.