firm drew on Velardi Brothers of Odessa; or
the house of Odessa drew upon one of the
other two houses. It is true that at each of
these places we had a dummy or two set up
in the way of partners, or representatives of
the local firm, but the only person of the whole
concern who had any capital was my partner,
Mr. Velardi, of London. And, as I said in
the previous chapter, he started the three firms
with not more than three hundred pounds in
bank.

Had we been content to keep only a moderate
amount of paper afloat, and had we been more
impartial in dividing the amount we sent for
discount amongst the various commercial capitals
of Europe, we might have carried on the little
game of triangular paper-trading for some time
longer, and might always have obtained in
London what accommodation we wanted, to a
moderate extent, from our bankers. But now
that we had commenced to dabble in shares and
joint-stock companies, this became more and
more difficult, as we were often pressed for large
sums with which to pay the differences upon
various transactions on the Stock Exchange;
and, in order to have money in hand, we were
obliged to discount our paper on the spot.
Latterly the amount we had sent into our
banker had increased tenfold, and the not
unnatural consequence was that after making some
difficulty more than once, our Lombard-street
friend one fine morning declined altogether to
discount for us, at least until some of the
paper he already held of ours had run off. No
wonder, then, that upon reading the banker's
unexpected reply to our application, Mr.
Velardi had exclaimed, "This sort of thing
won't do."

Something had to be done, and that quickly.
A great amount of paper of ours—bills drawn by
us and accepted by the firm at Smyrna or
Odessa—had to be provided for. Otherwise, if
the money to meet these bills were not remitted
by a certain day, the respective houses would
have to stop payment, and the whole
concern would come to the ground with a smash
—the London, Smyrna, and Odessa firms
included.

To a great mind nothing is impossible, and
in this emergency Mr. Velardi proved that he
was equal to the difficulty. In the first place,
he at once, with a stiff and somewhat angry
note, withdrew our account from the too
cautious private banker, and placed it with a
joint-stock bank, which was glad, and had been
too anxious to have our name on their books.
The day had come when in London there were
so many new banking concerns that managers
and directors of such companies jumped at
anything in the shape of a new current account.
Our credit balance with our old banker was by
no means a small one; when we withdrew it the
amount was upwards of two thousand pounds,
and although this was altogether from the
proceeds of paper still afloat, the joint-stock bank
not only received us with open arms, but
proposed that one of our partners should become
a director upon its board. This—after some
few days of coquetting, and professing that
we really did not seek the honour—we agreed
to; and it was duly announced, in the money
article of the Times, that "the board of the Onyx.
Bank (Limited) had been strengthened by the
accession of Mr. Velardi, of the well-known firm
of Velardi, Watson, and Co., of Austin Friars;
whilst one of the small guerilla City weekly
monetary publications announced—for "a
consideration" of course—that " owing to the accession
of Mr. Velardi to the board of the Onyx
Bank, it was believed that establishment would
in future be very largely supported by the Greek
interest in London." This disinterested surmise
proved much more correct than similar prophecies
generally do, for as Greek commercial men
generally follow, and often help each other, no
sooner was the name of one of their community
seen on the board of a joint-stock bank, than a
perfect flood of current accounts poured into
the concern, and Mr. Velardi's name stood as
that of a man whom the board was not only very
glad to get, but whom it would be very sorry to
lose.

The Onyx Bank (Limited), although a new,
was a respectable, institution. It is true that,
like others of the newly started concerns, it
was most anxious to get accounts, thinking
no doubt that the bad and indifferent among
them could be weeded out when the bank got a
little firmer footing in the mercantile world.
Hitherto, the business done by this establishment
had been but a moderate one, and,
though the directors had exerted themselves
to the very utmost to obtain accounts, Mr.
Velardi was the first gentleman with a seat at
the board who had brought in anything like a
considerable amount of business. This of course
made him a great card with his fellow-directors;
the more so as he had pleasant manners, was
an excellent man of business, and always well
posted up in matters of exchange and
continental affairs of trade, loans, &c. All this gave
our firm great facilities in the way of discounting
our paper, and as we opened at about
the same time another discount account with
one of the new discount companies, of which
I had become a director, our means appeared
almost unlimited. Thus, so far as monetary
facilities went, the private banker in Lombard-
street who had refused to discount any more
of our paper, really conferred a great benefit
upon us.

My partner was, however, not the man to
remain contented with a partial success. He
had provided well for the present, and was
determined to provide well for the future.
Believing our firm to be very wealthy, one of the
directors of the Onyx Bank offered to put his son
into our house as a partner, and to give him a
bonfi fide capital of five thousand pounds. Mr.
Velardi was far too much a man of the world to
agree to this at once, but asked some days to
consider of it, giving his consent at last on the
condition that Mr. White—the young man who
was to join us—should at once proceed to