would be called on to contribute still further
upon their shares. Day by day did we receive
letters—letters of indignation and of
remonstrance, letters demanding information and
demanding explanation—from our shareholders in
the country; whilst one or other of those resident
in London came daily to the office to ask
how matters were going on. It was now that
my troubles as secretary commenced. I had to
reply to all the letters that came, and see all the
indignant shareholders who called. One old
gentleman—a Dissenting Clergyman from one of
the Eastern Counties—shook his fist in my face,
and threatened, if I did not on the spot give him
a cheque for five hundred pounds—the amount
he had paid up upon fifty shares—he would have
me up before what he called "the Lord Mayor
and all the aldermen." I began to feel that my
lines had not been cast in pleasant places, and,
to avoid all unpleasantness, began to keep out of
the office as much as possible. I heartily wished
that I had never formed any acquaintance either
with Mr. May or "THE GRAND FINANCIAL AND
CREDIT BANK."

At last the beginning of the end came. Mr.
Francatello, in spite of every financial scheme
and dodge, in both of which he was no mean
adept, was obliged to stop payment, and to
avoid being provided with free lodgings in
Whitecross-street, had to take out his protection
in the Bankruptcy Court. By our Articles
of Association he could no longer sit at our
board as a director, and of the three directors
left: one, Colonel T. Frost, found it more
convenient to betake himself to the Continent, as
he was labouring under a slight suspicion of
debt, and had in his pocket more than one slip
of paper, on which the first words were
"VICTORIA, BY THE GRACE or GOD." The only
directors now left were Mr. May, brother of our
solicitor, and Mr. Spencer—for Mr. Everett, a
canny North countryman, who seldom came to
London, had left the ship when the first signs
of the storm came on. According to our Articles
of Association, not fewer than three directors
could form a board, thus our vessel was left
without any one to direct her, and affairs were
brought to a stand-still.

Now commenced a legal race as to who would
win the prize of winding up the company in
Chancery. Every solicitor who knew any
shareholder of the bank, tried to be put in the field;
nay, our own Mr. May, the promoter of the
company and the very author of its being,
tried hard to get the job, which was worth a
couple of thousand pounds to the fortunate
lawyer who obtained it. I did hear it said in
the bank that Mr. May had had the petition to
wind us up in Chancery for many weeks in his
pocket, and that he only waited for a favourable
opportunity to use it, being in the mean time
busy getting "undertakings" from others, by
which he could make something more out of
the concern. But however this was, Mr. May
was not fated to kill his own child, for although
he tried hard, he did not obtain the winding
of us up. There was an indignation meeting
of the shareholders, and they appointed their own
solicitor to wind us up, the petition being duly
granted by the Vice-Chancellor. In a very short
time the shutters of our office ceased to be taken
down, and thus ended the history of "THE
GRAND FINANCIAL AKD CREDIT BANK OF
EUROPE, ASIA, AFRICA, AMERICA, AND
AUSTRALIA (LIMITED)."

WHAT THE CYCLONE DID AT
MASULIPATAM.

MAN has done something towards replenishing
the earth, but shamefully little as yet
towards subduing it. Where he has it pretty
well under control, he is too apt to wear it out,
without thought for those who come after.
Thus, for instance, in the south of France
people have only just found out that one
generarion has no right to cut down all the woods,
and so subject their posterity to destructive
floods whenever the rain comes heavily. That's
the way man too often deals with the earth
where he can manage it—leaves it, like an old
cotton-ground in Virginia, worthless for a century
or so; or like most of "the Isles of
Greece," so dried up and wholly worked out as
to seem doomed to utter barrenness till the day
of judgment. The fact is, man must give up
coping so incessantly with his fellow-man, and
take more to coping with Nature in places
where he has hitherto been too submissive.
Will man ever get to control the tempest?
to regulate the earthquake and the eruption?
Surely we may at least hope, some time or other,
to know the law of storms so well as to foresee
them, and so to be forearmed. We shall do much
more than we have done if we go on for the
next twenty years at the present rate of discovery.
Lieutenant Maury, indeed, has other and wilder
work in hand—more's the pity; but Admiral
Fitzroy is a little Royal Society in himself, and,
if we keep at peace, he may be trusted never to
give in till he is able to beat his drum with no
uncertain sound ever so many hours before the
gale comes on. Look at him, alone, studying
to save life, speeding his warnings to the poor
Yorkshire fishermen, the heavily-laden colliers,
the Mersey fleet ready to sail. He does not
take up much room in the newspapers, which
are full of the wranglings of Tennant and
Whitworth, of "the battle of the guns," and of talk
about "our iron-clads." Why, if half as much
time, and intelligence, and energy, and money,
had been spent for the last ten years on the
storm question as has been used up for
Dahlgrens, and Parrots, and turreted ships, and
Monitors, and gun-boats, on both sides of the
Atlantic, no doubt by this time we should know
a little more about storms than we do, and not
our own coast only, but every place where our
flag is known would have its barometer and its
officer to register observations.

The world is still young in these things. Dr.
Humming may fix next year for it to come to
an end, and may straightway take a lease of his