waited and tided over the temporary difficulty,
and didn't withdraw at all.

About the beginning of December, in 'Sixty-three,
when I went to put in three pounds, the
clerk wouldn't take it. "What's up," I says;
"going to stop?" "No," he says; "but if
you look at the rules and regulations in your
book, you'll find that you ain't allowed to put
in more than thirty pounds a year." That, I
believe, is to protect the regular bankers, and it
may be quite right, but I don't exactly see it.
I know this, that before the new year, when I
might begin to put in again, I had blewed that
three pound which the clerk wouldn't take. If
it did any good to the regular bankers, it
certainly didn't do any good to me. However, at
the end of 'sixty-three, I had fifty pounds at the
Post-office Savings-bank, and I might have had
sixty, only I took a holiday in August, and went
down with Susan for a week to Margate, where
we were rather free. And here I found out
another advantage of this wonderful Post-office
bank. Susan and I went boating, and raffling,
and driving in chaises, and ran short, and were
likely to be in a fix, until I looked over the
rules and regulations in my bank-book, when I
learned that I might withdraw my money at any
Post-office Savings-bank in the kingdom, by
giving notice to that effect. So I sent up the
usual notice of withdrawal to London—I keep
a dozen of them stitched together in a cover,
and call it my cheque-book—stating that I
wanted to withdraw the money at the
post-office at Margate; and, almost by return, back
came the withdrawal paper, and I had nothing
to do but go to the post-office and get it cashed.
And the forms don't cost you a farthing; there's
no postage to pay, and when the time comes for
you to send up your book to the chief office in
London for the interest at two and a half per
cent to be calculated and added to your account
—which is the anniversary of the day on which
the first deposit was made—the Postmaster-General
sends you a big envelope for the
purpose.

Altogether, it's the best regulated thing I
ever came across, and if it doesn't make people
save, nothing will. But it does, I'm sure.
Look at Bardsley's shop now, to what it was.
"Why, that little box with the pigeon-hole,
where they used to do the post-office order
business, has swollen into a great banking
department, and there's Bardsley himself, with a
clerk to help him, at it all day long, with piles
of bank-notes and bowls full of sovereigns
beside them—just like Twining's, or the
Bank of England itself. Bardsley's proud of
it, too; I know he is. He's never behind
the counter now, serving tea and sugar; he
leaves that to his young men; he's a banker,
bless you.

I don't believe I should ever have saved
anything if these Post-office Savings-banks hadn't
come up; and I'm sure if it was generally
known how handy and convenient they are,
thousands like myself would take advantage of
them, and soon learn to be careful and provident.
If there's a philanthropist that's hard up
for an object, I don't know what he could do
better than go about distributing tracts setting
forth the rules and regulations and advantages
of the Post-office Savings-banks.

AMONG PIRATES.

MY friend MICHAEL ANDERSEN, late carpenter
of that ill-fated bark the FLOWERY LAND, is a
man of few words. These being, for the most
part, Norwegian, he has a certain difficulty in
making his sentiments clearly intelligible to the
British mind, and this difficulty is enhanced by
the effect produced upon the poor fellow's
nervous system, both by the murderous scenes he
has witnessed, and his subsequent compulsory
association of three weeks with the piratical
gang who had murdered the captain and others,
and seized the ship. Nevertheless, in the course
of an hour's visit he lately paid me, with
reference to obtaining a passage back to Christiansand,
Michael related enough to make his
experience worth recording in the "story of our
lives from year to year."

It is no exaggeration to say that, for the whole
period I have mentioned—three weeks—the
man's life hung upon a hair. In his condensed
evidence given at the recent trial, Andersen
stated that while standing at the top of the
cuddy-stairs, and bending over the mangled
body of the mate, he was himself struck with
a handspike on the back of the neck. This
blow, which struck him half senseless down the
steps, a fall of six feet, was no doubt intended
to have been deadly. Lighting upon the
neck and shoulder, it only occasioned him a
few days' stiffness and pain, and warned him
of the critical tenure on which he retained his
life.

There seems to have been little general
intercourse among the polyglot crew, but,
fortunately for Andersen, he had established a sort
of friendship with one of the Manilla
miscreants—Lyons—who ultimately came forth
as the leading spirit of the murderous
conspiracy. To this man's persistent interposition,
Andersen, the second mate, and the
boy Early, were unquestionably indebted for
their lives.

Of these three, my friend Michael stood ia
the most imminent peril. The second mate was
needed to navigate the vessel. The boy—a
reserved and timid lad—was held in contempt. No
carpenter was needed, and the very appearance
of poor Andersen at any part of the ship gave
such umbrage to the mutineers, that, in spite of
the opposition of his friend "Joe Lyons," as
he called him, no day passed without its being
resolved to kill him before its close. So long as
"Joe Lyons " was present, Michael was
comparatively safe. The ticklish part of it was
to survive during his patron's unavoidable
disappearances. To facilitate this process, the
latter imparted every day to his friend a regular
lesson in deportment, suggested by the existing