first, as in the case of Savings Banks, no new
local projects would be needed in the way of
friendly society efforts. The squire and clergyman
who have a sufficient number of farm-labourers
to try a philanthropic experiment upon,
will often form a benefit society. The whole
thing comes to pieces sooner or later; but they
work and pay too. If they do not form a club,
they will subscribe to a village club held at the
public-house; the clergyman will — it is quite a
common practice — preach for the club, and dine
afterwards with the members. Hardly one in a
hundred of such clubs but are as rotten as it is
possible for club-material to be. The well-
meant but not well-bestowed help from such
quarters would be rendered needless, and sooner
or later entirely withdrawn. But most of all,
the societies, the head-quarters of which are said
to be in London and other populous towns, and
who do business among the rural poor, would be
driven off the ground. The poor are first allured
to pay into a large central society, which is the
trap set by one or two knaves to catch poor men.
When they have come to the point of distress
where the friendly society should step in, the
discovery is made that they have been cruelly
robbed of their little and hardly earned savings.
Such heartless villany " doth ravish the poor
when it getteth him into its net;" and it is
seldom that the guilty parties can be brought to
justice, and even if caught, such is the difficulty
of conviction, that they generally escape.

A system which should remove all pretext
for such societies to make their way among the
rural poor, would of itself be a great boon to
the country. There cannot be reasonable doubt
that every friendly society, in such a condition
as to be approved at a triennial examination by
an actuary (from lack of which the Registrar's
advice is but little cared for), would fare never
the worse from the introduction into the field of
their work of a rival, by whose means the
importance and better knowledge of the benefits
of life insurance would speedily become known.

It is reasonable to expect that all good and
thoroughly trustworthy societies would be the
gainers by such a step, and much lamentation
will not be made over those (a most numerous
class, notwithstanding) which are either on the
sure road to insolvency, or have already travelled
the same, and are hopelessly and irremediably
bad.

THE GHOST AT THE RATH.

MANY may disbelieve this story, yet there
are some still living who can remember hearing,
when children, of the events which it details,
and of the strange sensation which their
publicity excited. The tale, in its present form,
is copied, by permission, from a memoir written
by the chief actor in the romance, and preserved
as a sort of heirloom in the family whom it
concerns.

In the year——, I, John Thunder, captain
in the Regiment, having passed many
years abroad following my profession, received
most unexpected notice that I had become
owner of certain properties which I had never
thought to inherit. I set off for my native
land, arrived in Dublin, found that my good
fortune was real, and at once began to look
about me for old friends. The first I met with,
quite by accident, was curly-headed Frank
O'Brien, who had been at school with me,
though I was ten years his senior. He was
curly-headed still, and handsome, as he had
promised to be, but careworn and poor. During
an evening spent at his chambers I drew all
his history from him. He was a briefless barrister.
As a man, he was not more talented
than he had been as a boy. Hard work and
anxiety had not brought him success, only
broken his health and soured his mind. He was
in love, and he could not marry. I soon knew
all about Mary Leonard, his fiancée, whom he
had met at a house in the country somewhere,
in which she was governess. They had now
been engaged for two years; she active and
hopeful, he sick and despondent. From the
letters of hers which he showed me, I thought
she was a treasure, worth all the devotion he
felt for her. I thought a good deal about what
could be done for Frank, but I could not easily
hit upon a plan to assist him. For ten chances
you have of helping a smart man, you have not
two for a dull one.

In the mean time my friend must regain his
health, and a change of air and scene was
necessary. I urged him to make a voyage of
discovery to The Rath, an old house and park
which had come into my possession as portion of
my recently-acquired estates. I had never been
to the place myself; but it had once been the
residence of Sir Luke Thunder, of generous
memory, and I knew that it was furnished, and
provided with a caretaker. I pressed him to
leave Dublin at once, and promised to follow
him as soon as I found it possible to do so.

So Frank went down to The Rath. The place
was two hundred miles away; he was a stranger
there, and far from well. When the first week
came to an end, and I had heard nothing from
him, I did not like the silence; when a fortnight
had passed, and still not a word to say he
was alive, I felt decidedly uncomfortable; and
when the third week of his absence arrived at
Saturday without bringing me news, I found
myself whizzing through a part of the country
I had never travelled before, in the same train
in which I had seen Frank seated at our
parting.

I reached D—— , and, shouldering my knapsnack
walked right into the heart of a lovely
woody country. Following the directions I
had received, I made my way to a lonely road,
on which I met not a soul, and which seemed
cut out of the heart of a forest, so closely were
the trees ranked on either side, and so dense
was the twilight made by the meeting and
intertwining of the thick branches overhead. In
these shades I came upon a gate, like a gate