with amusement and interest, and are
looked upon by the old fundholders and
annuitants as highly dangerous and suspicious
characters.

Some bring their children with them, just as
they would take them for a gossip to the
chandler's-shop round the corner. The business of
receiving dividends is looked upon as a piece of
exhilarating dissipation in which it is proper for
the whole family to participate. While the
lawful female proprietor of stock is engaged
with the clerks in the preliminary proceedings,
her mother stands by to watch that she is not
cheated, her father sits blinking at the counters
and the visitors in the recesses of the
Rotunda like an hospital patient waiting for his
turn, and the children are left to stagger about
the warrant-office between the substantial legs
of grave capitalists who are the pride and glory
of the City. When the pink or buff warrant
has been changed for gold or notes, and the
whole business admits of no further drawing
out, the children are collected by the mother,
while the grandmother scolds the blinking
grandfather for not taking better care of
them, and they are found lying upon their
stomachs looking down a grating; probably
under the idea of commanding a view of the
gold-cellars.

Another public creditor is a countryman in
holiday dress, accompanied by his wife, and who
seems not to know exactly what he wants, or
where he is to obtain it. He is shy of
asking questions, and so is his wife, although
she keeps quietly tugging at his arm; for
they have heard that London is a sad
place, and that every polite and well-dressed
man is a sharper. So Agricola and his
better-half keep wandering round and round
for half an hour, until they can bear the
suspense no longer. At last the provincial mind
overcomes its doubts, and pours all its troubles
in provincial accents into the willing ear of one
of the Bank porters.

Another public creditor comes gasping in,
attended by a tall, stout female companion, with
a basket. Baskets, on great dividend days, are
almost as fashionable as umbrellas; after these,
come capacious reticules; some few of the
creditors, or their attendants, carry the streetdoor
key swinging on their fingers. The gasping
creditor is small and thin; his legs are
wasted, his body is awry, his back is bent
forward almost into a hump, his chest is bowed
inward, his breath is short, his eyes are
staring, his mouth is half open, his fingers
are long and bony, and the blue veins on the
back of his hands are like cords. His dress
is loose and wrinkled, and of a shabby,
rusty black. His wife, his nurse, or his
keeper—the stout, florid woman with the
basket—takes him up to the warrant
counter, where he is not tall enough or
strong enough to reach the book. It is tilted
towards him, he leans over with a starting eye,
a deep cough, and hard-drawn breath, to scan
the proper line, and traces the course with one
lean hand, as he signs his name with the other.
It is curious to see that a great country, in seeking
the sinews of its heroic wars, has not rejected
the assistance of even such a feeble manikin as
this.

More withered, twitching women, crawl slowly
up to the fountains of gold, until you think that
the witches in Macbeth must have been large
investors in the funds, and that these, their
children, are now drawing the fruits of their
provident habits. Mother Shipton is here,
or her lineal descendant, as punctually as the
day, with Daniel Dancer, the traditional miser;
with greasy butchers from Newgate Market;
with faithful butlers, who never tampered with
their masters' wine; with clean nurses, whose
fortune it has been to fall upon the rose beds of
servitude; with young women, who draw their
moderate dividends in gold, and look
unconsciously amongst the young men, who are doing
likewise, for a steady, well-to-do husband to
share it. Pickpockets occasionally stray in,
done up in what they fondly natter themselves
is the true old stockbroker style, and are
surprised to find that their disguise is
immediately detected by the officers on duty.
Sometimes these gentry evade the law
by securing the victim in marriage whom
they intend to rob—for lovely woman is very
weak, and some gentlemen are very agreeable.

Another public creditor is borne in like a
nodding Guy Fawkes in November, by two
companions, on an old, brown, creaking Windsor
chair: a mere bundle of dirty rags. She is placed
in her chair before the long annuity counter,
gazing at the wall with a glassy meaningless eye,
and with her chin sunk down upon the breast
of her tattered outer garment. The forms of the
office require that she should apply in person,
and the two humble friends who take care of
her—a man and woman—have brought her up
to show her. Her claim is small, and a power of
attorney is too costly for her slender resources.
A difficulty occurs about signing the book, and
the two companions shout loudly in both her ears:
but they might as well attempt to awaken the
dead. The long old cowl-shaped bonnet does not
even move in reply, and the glassy eyes still
retain their watery stare of vacancy. A
principal clerk is summoned from a private desk to
decide in this emergency, and the result is that
she is allowed to make the sacred sign which
stands for new life in either state of existence.
When first she became a creditor of the state,
she was young, and, perhaps, sightly, and able
to write her name with the best of the small
fundholders; but that was in the good old days,
when George the Third was king, and Heaven
born ministers were struggling with the
Corsican. Now, her helpless withered arm is lifted
up, and clumsily made to form a thick inky
cross, with a juicy full-charged quill, as it might
have been unresistingly lifted up and made to
stab a Rotunda beadle. When her money is, at
last, procured, it turns out to be some thirty
shillings, which are passed before her listless