was one of our shareholders, and as such was
asked to pay up on the twenty shares which
stood in his name on our books. To the first,
second, or third applications he made no reply,
and at last the official liquidator, through the
army agents of his regiment, wrote to have his
pay attached for the money due upon his shares.
The agents wrote back, that the gentleman,
having lately sold out of the service, they had
no power over his money, as he was no longer in
the army, but sent an address where they
believed a letter would reach him. To this
address the official liquidator wrote, requesting
payment of two hundred pounds, being ten
pounds per share upon the twenty shares he held.
In about a week the answer came back from
Germany—a large official-looking, unpaid, heavy
letter, for which some eight or nine shillings
had to be paid at the bank. The contents were
simply the parchment scrip certificates of the
shares this gentleman held, with a laconic note,
in which the writer begged that the bank would
accept the shares as a present from him, and as
a slight testimony of his esteem and regard for
the establishment. "Sells" like this, although
they formed the subject of many jokes amongst
the employés, did not tend to put the official
liquidator into good humour, and the life he led
us for some time was what the Americans call
"quite a caution."

I have mentioned that when the order for
winding-up came, we had not many current
accounts or deposits in the bank, but we had a few
—some two or three dozen—and although none
of the credit balances were large, they nearly all
belonged to persons to whom the loss of even a
few pounds was a very serious matter. One
of these was a French tradesman, who, in an
evil hour, had thought fit to open an account
with forty pounds at our bank. The poor man
evidently believed his respectability the greater
by his being able to pay people to whom he owed
money with cheques instead of in hard cash.
As I afterwards learnt, his drafts were all small,
and he generally paid in on the Monday or
Tuesday about as much as he had drawn out on
the Saturday, so that his balance remained always
about the same. After the order to wind-up
came from the court, of course nothing could be
paid out of the bank, and amongst the first
cheques sent away from the counter was one for
ten pounds from this unfortunate foreigner. It
had been presented through another bank, and
consequently was not returned to the drawer for
a couple of days. In due time he heard of it,
and came at once to our offices to know why his
cheque had not been honoured. It was a long
time before we could make him understand the
truth, but when he did so, he was frantic. He
cursed us all as a set of swindlers, denounced
England, all Englishmen, and more particularly
all English banks and bankers, as des sacrrrrés
ques, and made comparisons by no means
flattering to us between our establishment and that
of a bank in Paris, apparently well known to
himself. At last he subsided, and for nearly an
hour kept entreating us, for the love of le bon
Dieu, to have pity upon him, upon his wife, upon
his numerous small children, and upon his aged
mother, and to pay him back his thousand francs
—his forty pounds. After this he used to come
every day and wait for two or three hours to see
the manager, the directors, the liquidator—
anybody. This went on for more than a
fortnight, during which it was pitiable to see the
hopeless despair to which—as it seemed to
us—he was reduced. We afterwards found
out that, although he put on an air of utter
poverty, this individual was really well to do in
the world, being worth at least a thousand
pounds, which he had made at his trade of
bootmaker during the last two years, so that,
although he was no doubt to be pitied, he was
by no means so badly off as many of those who
had burnt their fingers by touching the shares
of our bank.

He was, however, more to be pitied than a
countrywoman of his, who for a long time kept
us in perpetual terror by her daily visits. Some
weeks before our bank had stopped, this lady—
a fashionable West-end milliner—had received
from a customer a cheque for ten pounds upon
the "Grand Financial." Had she presented
the cheque at once, or had she at once paid it
into her own banker's, the draft would have been
honoured. As it was, she kept it by her for a
month or more, and then, just after the order
to wind-up the concern had been obtained, she
presented it herself for payment, when it
was of course returned. In the mean time it
would appear that her customer had left
England, and could not be traced by her, so that
she was "let in" for her ten pounds. Her rage
was something wonderful to see. In vain we
tried to explain to her that the person who had
given her the cheque had kept an account at the
bank, and that it was not the fault of that
person—who, indeed, had lost a balance of sixty
or seventy pounds by the bank being wound-up—
but her own, that the cheque was dishonoured.
But she either would, or could, understand
nothing. Day after day she came and demanded
the money from us, ending each violent harangue
by asking whether we thought she came to the
City for change of air, and entering into details
about an expected increase to her family, which,
however interesting to herself, was in no way so
to us. I never saw, and hope never to see
again, so violent a female. With what
expectation she came again and again to the
office, I never could learn, for she must have
spent two or three pounds in cab hire. But,
after a time, she, too, got tired, and left off
tormenting us, much to the comfort of those
who had to receive her daily visits.

In connexion with the winding-up of our
bank, there was one thing pretty certain, that
the shareholders lost very considerably by the
transaction. Nor is it possible that it should
ever be otherwise. The enormous expenses
attending a winding-up order, very soon eat up
anything that is left of a company's property,
and the shareholders have in nine cases out of
ten to pay for the pleasant legal game which