He went away at once—went away singing and
beating the rails down the street with his stick.
"Poor little soul!" he said; "how she lets the
net wrap round and round her again."

HOW THE BANK CAME TO GRIEF.

NEW institutions generally work well at first,
just as new brooms are said to sweep clean.
Our bank* was no exception to the rule. About
two months after the shares were allotted, we
moved out of our temporary offices, and
commenced business in premises which had been
hired and fitted up for our use. Nothing could
be smarter than our desks, counters, brass rails,
and new ledgers; nothing more grave and
business-like than our cashiers; nothing more
imposing than our board-room, with its large
table and fourteen easy-chairs; nothing more
overpoweringly respectable than our two semi-
livery dressed messengers. The very sight of
our piles of new cheque-books—numbered
lettered, and stamped—or of our heaps of new
white calf-bound pass-books, ought to have
given even a South Sea Islander an
uncontrollable desire to open a current account, had
he come into our office. As I gazed upon
these triumphs over past difficulties—these
incontestable evidences that out of nothing not a
little had been made—I could hardly help
wondering that the passers-by—as they read upon
the brass plates of our doors that within those
walls THE GRAND FINANCIAL AND CREDIT
BANK OF EUROPE, ASIA, AFRICA, AMERICA,
AND AUSTRALIA (LIMITED), lived and moved
and had its being—did not rush in, and beg to
do business with us.

* See "How we Floated the Bank," voL xil, page 498

At first we certainly got many constituents,
some—but by no means the majority—of whom
were respectable, and kept balances more or
less large in our bank. Most of these new
accounts were brought in by our different
directors, each of whom made it a point to ask
his friends to give the new concern a helping
hand. As a matter of course, a number of
accounts that were neither respectable as to
the character of those who opened them, nor
in any way worth having in a pecuniary sense,
were brought to us. A new bank can hardly—
or at any rate the managers of these young
institutions seldom, if ever, have the courage to—
reject any accounts, and we were no exception
to this rule. "Get accounts, good ones if
you can, but in any case get them," seems to
be the maxim of all managers of new banks.
Thus, often an individual on the verge of
insolvency would come to us, simply because his
own—some older bank—had plainly intimated
that they did not think his account worth keeping,
and would feel obliged if he would withdraw
the small balance, if any, that stood
to his credit in their books. He would make
a great show of opening an account with us,
paying in fifty, eighty, or one hundred pounds
to begin with, but rapidly diminishing his
balance by frequent cheques, until at last came
one, which, from the credit removed his balance
to the debit side of our books. Overdrawn
cheques were not refused payment, because our
manager was afraid of offending new customers,
and hoped as times went on that matters would
mend. Managers of young banks like to be
able to say at each weekly board meeting, that
during the last seven days there have been ten,
twenty, or thirty new accounts opened, and the
directors but too often take this as a criterion of
business done, without inquiring who are the
new customers, or what are the balances they
intend keeping to their credit. However, some
of our new accounts soon showed themselves to
be of a nature which even the manager of
our bank could not stand. One I remember
particularly. The man who opened it paid in
four hundred pounds on the Monday, and
during the next two days made several
payments to his credit of ten, twenty, and thirty
pounds each, giving at the same time a number
of cheques against his account. Our cashier
saw that although large amounts were paid out
of this account, a good deal was paid into the
credit of the customer, aud therefore believed
him to be in a large way of business. One day,
about a fortnight after the account was opened,
there stood but two or three pounds to the
credit side of this gentleman's balance, when
late in the afternoon he paid in a crossed cheque
for five hundred pounds, drawn by another
man, upon one of the West-end private banks.
As our establishment was much too young to
belong to the Clearing-house, we had to pass
in the crossed cheque to the bank where we
kept our account, in order to have it cleared,
aud therefore could not know until next day
whether the cheque was paid. In the mean
time—believing that it would be duly paid
—the ledger-keeper had passed the cheque to
the credit of our customer, which was just what
the latter had calculated upon. Some hours
before we could know whether the cheque
would be paid or not, an open cheque for four
hundred and fifty pounds from our client was
presented and paid over our counter, and from
that day to this our highly respectable client has
never been heard of. I need hardly say, that
in due time—a few hours after his own cheque
had been paid by us—the crossed cheque he
had given us for five hundred pounds was sent
back, with the letters "N. S." * written upon it,
was returned to us, and thus our customer made
in the space of a few days exactly four hundred
and fifty pounds by his little speculation.

* "N. S.," meaning "not sufficient funds to meet
the draft."

This was the largest, but by no means the
only, loss we had in the item of customers'
balances during the first two months after we
commenced business. In the discount department,
however, our misfortunes were on a very
much greater scale, and although our manager