subject, I did not like to ask for my cheque
back again, nor, had I done so, would it have
been of much use, for I am very sure I should
not have had it returned.

Having got so far in our first meeting, the
chairman and secretary— who was also general
manager—proceeded to distribute the shares to
the directors, previously affixing thereunto the
seal of the company. Each member of the
board received scrip certificates of one hundred
shares, on which it was stated that each share
was worth twenty pounds, and that ten pounds
had been paid up on each. This little business
over, we sat down to an excellent luncheon, and
the secretary then handed to each director two
sovereigns and two shillings, neatly folded up
in paper, so that I began to feel as if I were
already handling the wealth which was to flow
in upon me, and, in spite of the note-of-hand
business, I left the office fully convinced that I
had invested my thousand pounds well.

Our board met every week. On the second
board day some of our outside touters brought
us in proposals for life insurances, which of
course we had to refer to our medical officer, after
due inquiry as to the life and habits of those
who wished to effect insurances. These
propositions for insurances are obtained, in most cases,
through "agents," or "touts," of whom every
insurance company employs more or less,
according to its means of doing business, and the
capital it has at command. These gentlemen
are not engaged at any fixed salary, but merely
get a per-centage upon insurances which are
effected by their means or introduction. If one
of these agents have the gift of persuasion, and
can make himself agreeable to the particular
class of persons to whom he addresses his
eloquence, he may easily earn his three or four
pounds a week, or even more. A good insurance
agent is invaluable to a new company, and when
he once makes a name for himself he is in
demand by other and larger companies, and
generally gets promoted to be a travelling agent,
with travelling allowances, so that he has a
roving commission over large portions of the
kingdom, and fares always of the best, at the
expense of the company.

In addition to these travelling touts or agents,
every company has fixed agents, each of whom
does his best to obtain business for the
company in the district or town where he lives.
Like the travelling agents, these gentlemen
receive no salaries, but are paid a commission
upon the business they do. They have generally
—I may say invariably some other
occupation, such as house agents, builders, plumbers
and glaziers, or shopkeepers of the better
sort. Such agents do not, generally, do much
in the way of obtaining life insurances, but
are very useful in getting insurances against
fire. The propositions they procure are
forwarded to the chief office, and from them
submitted to inspectors, who report upon the
nature of the insurance, and the probable
amount of risk to be incurred. If the offer be
accepted, the risk is divided between one or
more other offices, so that in the event of a
fire the loss may not all fall upon the one
establishment.

In most young insurance companies, the
directors do their utmost to obtain business for
the company. This was the case in our company.
Each member of our board did his best among
his friends to obtain business, so that at even
our second meeting the propositions we had
before us were not few, and of these a
considerable proportion were accepted.

At this meeting a resolution was proposed,
seconded, and passed, that three members of the
board should be selected by ballot, and that
those three should form what is termed a
financial committee: all matters connected with the
monetary arrangements of the company being in
their hands, and the other members of the board
not being allowed to interfere in any way with
what they did, until they reported progress to
the board at the end of the first six months. I
objected strongly to this measure, but found
myself in a minority consisting of myself and
the brewer: the latter, moreover, being very
faint, indeed, in his protest against the action
of an honourable, a baronet, and a member of
parliament. And so the ballot was taken, and
the whole board—with the exception of myself,
who voted for the brewer, and the brewer, who
voted for me— was found to have voted for the
same persons, namely, my honourable friend the
peer's brother, the member of parliament, and
one of the medical men. To me this looked
uncommonly like a previously arranged "plant,"
but I determined to watch matters, and to keep
my own counsel for the present.

Besides life and fire insurances, we received
propositions for loans. The way in which we
lent money was as follows. Suppose A wanted
to borrow, say, a hundred pounds from us.
The first thing he must do would be to give us
the names of two friends as his sureties.
If these proved on inquiry to be householders,
free from debt, fully able to pay the amount for
which they were sureties if called upon to do so,
and not under liabilities to any other office, they
were considered good sureties. The borrower
and his two sureties were then made to insure
their lives for double the amount to be lent to
A. So that A, B, and C insured their lives for
two hundred pounds, or, in all, life insurances
to the amount of six hundred pounds were
brought into the company by the loan of one
hundred pounds being granted.

It is possible that, whatever little amount
of business knowledge I had, was of an old-
fashioned fidgety kind; but about this time,
when the new direction had fairly got the affairs
of the new company in their hands, I did not
like the idea of more than one of our directors
making use of our office in order to obtain a
loan for themselves or their friends.
Proposals of this kind were certain to be passed.
The board had little or nothing to say in the
matter, which was invariably referred to the
financial committee, who as certainly passed the
proposition and made the loan payable at once. I