that to the "touts" and pilot-fish, to whom he
pays a handsome commission. The best "touts"
are those who, like myself, have once been flats
but are now sharps; who were formerly pigeons
and were plucked, but who now help the hawks
to pluck. Few people would believe how many
of these "discount agents," as some of us
sometimes call ourselves, are to be found in every class
and rank of life. I know of more than one
broken-down peer whose sole source of income
has for years been "introducing business"
to bill discounters; and among officers who
have sold out of the army, and who without
any visible means of earning their bread still
live upon the fat of the land, the "profession"
of bringing lenders and borrowers of money
together has become exceedingly common. The
last resort of a "monetary agent" is to betake
himself to Aldershot, or the Curragh, Oxford,
or Cambridge, to seek for victims on which the
shark who employs him can feed. There is
a certain amount of business to be done at these
places, although in a small way, being almost
entirely with petty twenty, thirty, or at the
very utmost fifty pound bills, and these attended
with considerable risk both of loss and
expense.

West-end discounters are generally men clad
in purple and fine linen, who fare sumptuously
every day; but to this rule there are exceptions.
I know one of the fraternity who,
although making his eight or ten thousand a year,
does not spend two hundred. I had once
occasion to go to his private residence, which was in
a house for which he pays only twenty-eight
pounds a year, in a miserable dirty back street
in one of the northern suburbs of London. He
told me that he kept no servant, his wife and
daughter performing all the most menial offices
of the household.He does not profess to be
poor, but says openly that making and saving
money is his only pleasure in life. To judge
from appearances, he must be at least sixty
years of age, and I am convinced he is worth
at least as many thousand pounds; and yet
I heard him abuse his unfortunate wife for
ten minutes, because she had paid sixpence
instead of fivepence for some vegetables sold by
an itinerant greengrocer at the door. His
office—up three pair of stairs in one of the
most deserted of squares behind St. Clement
Danes—is a marvel of discomfort and misery.
He has one clerk, a boy of tender years, who
looks hungry and ready to run away at a
moment's notice. Yet this old man does a great
deal of business, and, as times and discounters
go, is far from being hard in his terms. I have
seen him sign cheques for three or four thousand
pounds in the course of half an hour. Let him
once be satisfied that a bill is all right, and he
does not hesitate a moment to pay down the
money.

But this individual is an exception to the
rule; West-end discounters almost invariably
living well and being much given to hospitality.
No one who has ever done business—either
as a borrower or an agent—with one of these
gentlemen, need ever be at a loss where to
look for a Sunday dinner, at which he will find
the best of wine, as of everything eatable in
season.

When a bill he has discounted is fairly
ascertained to be bad—when drawer and acceptor have
so come to grief that nothing can be got out of
the one or the other—the discounter seldom
troubles himself much about the document. He
looks upon it as worse than useless to throw good
money after bad in attempting to get "blood out
of a stone." And when any "swell" has to make
a clean breast of it before one of the
Commissioners in Bankruptcy, it is seldom or ever the
West-end discounter who opposes his discharge
from all liabilities. On the contrary, I have
more than once known a broken-down Guardsman
or insolvent dragoon who already owed a
discounter several hundreds, receive from him
the means of supporting himself until better times
came round. It is true that these practitioners
charge enormous rates of interest for money
lent, but they argue that no one is obliged to
borrow from them unless it suits him to do so,
and that all they do, and what they charge, is
fair and aboveboard.

NEW WORK BY MR. DICKENS.
In Monthly Parts, uniform with the Original Editions of
"Pickwick," "Copperfleld," &c.
Now publishing, PART XII., price Is., of
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
IN TWENTY MONTHLY PARTS.
With Illustrations by MARCUS STONE.
London: CHAPMAN and HALL, 193, Piccadilly.

In Number 313, to be published on the 19th of April, will
be commenced a new Serial Novel, entitled
HALF A MILLION OF MONEY,
By AMELIA B. EDWARDS,
Author of "BARBARA'S HISTORY."

The Right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors.