his kind patrons to beware of Staggers's lot;
and is not the Kiddy absolutely sure that
he can pick the winner from the field, this
time, and lead the sporting gents who honour
him with their confidence, to wealth and
laurels!

All these people, we found, on sober
inquiry, in common with a host of quacks and
fortune-tellers, really do use the office, and
really do receive large sums of money from
the unlucky pigeons, the records of whose folly
pass into the pigeon-holes. We were shewn
a circular, which has been very extensively
disseminated in the provinces. It explains
(with patterns of the article produced) a
pretended patent for the manufacture of a
fabric in universal demand. It promises to
each subscriber for one share, price five
shillings, (to be sent, of course, per Money-
order), not a paltry return of three or four
hundred per cent.; but a good round income.
"Subscribers," we quote the precise words of
the printed bait, "will, for every five shillings
they invest, realise from seventy-five to three
hundred pounds sterling per annum!"—to
be paid, it is politely stated in another part
of the prospectus, quarterly. Now, rational
people will say that the wild extravagance of
such a promise, exceeding all possible
gullibility, would be its own defeat. The said
rational people, however, will be (as they
sometimes are) in error. Credulity has no
bounds. It is a fact, that since the issue of
that golden circular, the Post-office
authorities have paid to its concocter,—not hundreds,
but thousands of pounds. Post-office
orders have poured in from believers in
impossible profit, at such a rate, that three
hundred pounds were handed over to the
successful schemer in the course of one
single week! Could Clairvoyance get a
postman's place, and read the sealed letters
as well as deliver them, what insane credence,
what impossible hope, what glowing cupidity
would be revealed in the wrappers to those
particular Post-office orders! Perhaps a
clergyman writes to inquire whether the first
quarter's produce of his five shillings enclosed
(on the before-mentioned scale of productiveness),
is likely to become due about September?
because, at the beginning of that month,
possibly, "he has a little bill of exchange to take
up!" So, a lady, writing, it is likely, in
August, wishes to open a school in December:
and does the gentleman think that, by that
time, her five shillings will have grown into,
—say even fifty pounds? The next letter
may show (mesmerically) the inmost soul
—and the five shillings—of a young gentleman,
who is "loved and beloved," &c., and
who wishes to know whether, if he take
a house at Lady-day, the first instalment
of the annual fortune will arrive in time
for him to enshrine his idol in it with the
requisite appliances for persons about to
marry?

It is right, however, to observe, that the
authorities, when they find themselves
accidentally and innocently agents in carrying on
such infamous schemes, take advantage of
any informality to withhold the payment,
and restore the orders to the deluded senders.

This sort of mystification is even more
surprising than that under which certain
uneducated individuals (Irish) have been
known to labour. The belief has more than
once been manifested at a Money-order office
window, that the mere payment of the
commission would be sufficient to procure an
order for five pounds; the form of paying in
the five pounds being deemed purely optional.
An Irish gentleman (who had left his hod at
the door) recently applied in Aldersgate
Street for an order for five pounds on a
Tipperary Post-office: for which he tendered
(probably congratulating himself on having
hit upon so good an investment) sixpence!
It required a lengthened argument to prove
to him that he would have to pay the five
pounds into the office, before his friend could
receive that small amount in Tipperary; and
he went away, after all, evidently convinced
that his not having this order was one of the
personal wrongs of Ireland, and one of the
particular injustices done to hereditary
bondsmen only.

To pass from the Pigeons to the Pigeon-
holes, it may be observed that, in the paying
department, there are eleven hundred of
the latter (Heaven knows how many of the
former; they are incalculable) corresponding
to the eleven hundred Money-order offices
spread all over England. The Scotch and
Irish advices have pigeon-holes to themselves.
When an order is presented, the clerk goes
straight to the hole marked with the name
of the town it has been issued from. If the
order correspond in every respect with the
advice, the cash is instantly paid.

The number of Money-order offices in the
United Kingdom is nearly seventeen hundred;
their accounts are dealt with, in Aldersgate
Street, by one hundred and seventy-eight
clerks. So promptly and accurately are these
accounts posted up, that a balance of the
whole kingdom as to money-orders is struck
daily; and, by two o'clock, the state of each
deputy's (or postmaster's) account can be
accurately ascertained—what he owes, or
what is due to him—up to the latest postal
communication.

That the gigantic operations of the entire
system may be seen at one view, we present
an account of its transactions during the year
which ended on the thirty-first of last
December:—The number of orders issued in
the United Kingdom during that time, was
nearly four million seven hundred thousand,
for money amounting to nearly nine millions
sterling. The cash which changed hands by
the intervention of the Post-office Money-order
office—in other words, the combined total
of issues and payments of money-orders, in
the United Kingdom, during last year, was