lost, and in five days—more one of them being
Sunday, on which nothing could be done—the
writ would be run out, and I should be liable to
be arrested without warning of any kind. In
my despair I applied to a solicitor, who advised
me to get the amount upon a three months' bill,
which was to be backed by a friend of his for a
consideration of ten pounds. To this I agreed,
intending, during the three months which I
should thus gain, to obtain money from another
source. The bill was drawn by me, and accepted
by a gentleman to whom I paid a bonus of ten
pounds, and who, at the same rate of commission,
would have accepted a bill of any amount
I liked to name. This time, however, I took
the precaution of bargaining that the ten pounds
was only to be paid in the event of the bill being
discounted, for my friend the solicitor only found
me an acceptor for my bill—he did not undertake
to provide me with a party who would
discount it. However, he gave me a letter of
introduction to a bill-discounter in the City,
who, although high in his terms, was safe to
"do" the bill for me.

"High in his terms!" I should rather think
he was. To find this gentleman's office was as
difficult as to obtain reliable information out of
Bradshaw. It took me the best part of an hour
to hunt behind the Mansion House for the court
in which, up four pairs of stairs, with one small
boy for a clerk, and a few broken chairs as
furniture, he transacted his business. To do
this money-lender justice, he was very prompt
in his dealings. He at once said he would take
the bill—which was drawn at three months, for
one hundred and thirty pounds, in order to
cover contingencies. For this bill he offered me
a cheque for eighty pounds, thus charging me
interest at the rate of something like one hun-
dred and eighty per cent per annum.

To accept terms like these would have been
utter madness; therefore, although almost
despairing as to what to do next, I betook myself
away, taking with me the bill of exchange, which
was now of no use.

An advertisement of "THE MUTUAL,
GENERAL, UNIVERSAL, BENEVOLENT, AND
PRUDENT LIFE AND LOAN INSURANCE SOCIETY,"
attracted my attention about this time. I had
but few days left in which to obtain the money
I required, but, by paying another ten-pound
note to the holder of the bill upon which I was
being sued, I obtained an undertaking that
judgment would not be signed against me, nor
would any further proceedings be taken for
another week, thus paying at the rate of more
than a pound a day to stave off annoyance for
the present. Having- managed this, I called
at the " MUTUAL, GENERAL, UNIVERSAL,
BENEVOLENT, AND PRUDENT LIFE AND LOAN
INSURANCE OFFICE," and asked upon what terms
I could borrow a hundred pounds. I was
informed that I should in the first place have to
insure my life for three hundred pounds; that I
must give a bond signed by three householders
of solvent means for the due repayment of the
loan; and that, should any one of the instalments
which I engaged to pay not be paid at
the time appointed, my sureties would be at
once called upon to pay up the whole loan. In
the mean time, I was given four printed forms,
one of which I was to fill up, and one of each of
which had to be filled up by the gentlemen who
consented to be my sureties. But I was told
that, before any steps whatever could be taken
in the matter, I must pay down the sum of two
guineas as an inquiry fee, which amount, the
clerk told me, "would on no account be returned
should the loan not be carried through." I paid
the money—not without misgivings as to my
ever deriving any benefit from so doing—and
betook myself to getting three friends who
would act as my sureties in the bond I had to
give.

After four or five days of incessant toil, worry,
and trouble, I managed to obtain the consent of
three friends to join me in the bond. One of
these was a clerk in a government office; he
was a householder, and had an income of about
three hundred pounds per annum. The second
—also a housekeeper—was managing man in a
large merchant's office in the City; his salary
was two hundred pounds a year, besides which,
he had a little private property of his own. The
third was a retired Indian civilian, whose pension
and income together amounted to upwards of
two thousand pounds a year.

Believing myself now quite sure of obtaining
the loan I wanted, I returned to the office of
"THE MUTUAL, GENERAL, &c.," and gave in the
names of the parties who had agreed to become
my sureties. I was then, told to call again the
next day, when the medical officer of the company
would meet me, and, after due examination,
would report as to whether my health was such
as to warrant my life being insured for three
hundred pounds—treble the amount of the loan
I had asked for.

At the hour appointed I was at the office
—taking care to bring with me the one guinea,
"not one pound" as the clerk said, when he told
me required as a medical fee before I could be
examined by the doctor. It so happened that
I had always considered myself, and I was
considered by others, to be an exceedingly healthy
man. I was yet but in the prime of life, and
had really never known what serious sickness
was since I could remember. I therefore thought
that this medical examination would be more a
matter of form than anything else. Not so the
doctor. He seemed determined to earn his fee
conscientiously. Had I been endeavouring to
enlist in her Majesty's Life Guards he could not
have taken more trouble to find out whether
there was not something amiss with me. Not
succeeding in discovering, in my present state
of health, anything that he could object to, he
made me go back into a complete history of my
past sanitary life, putting to me leading
questions much the same as a Trench procureur-general
does to a prisoner, when he is doing his
utmost to make him out as criminal as possible.
At last he fairly ran me to ground by an
acknowledgment on my part that ten years previously,