[Volume XXV
honor and an outcast, turns to guard his love in the Breton woods, and destroys her outlaw captor, the terrible Croquart the Fleming. The manhood of Bertrand of Brittany and his unselfish love, the nobility of Tiphaine and her simple faith, soften a story of wild adventure and rough bloodshed. The end is particularly effective, because while it promises happiness, the happiness is of the sort for which a man is contented to wait.
V•
“The Leaven of Love”
About the limit in beautiful coverings for popular Christmas fiction has been reached in the binding for “The Leaven of Love” by Clara Louise Burnham, she of the “Right Princess” and other delightful tales. The Leaven of Love is a California love story, told with all the cleverness, optimism, and simplicity which have marked Mrs. Burnham’s writings.	^
New Bank for Stevensville
A new state bank is being organized at Stevensville, Mont. Robert B. Smith, Amos Buck, L. R. Peck, J. F. Borough, H. D. Smart, N. P. Woods, Cyrus L. Franke, Geo. A. Kain and others are interested.
so with some trepidation, and carrying a dark lantern a man came on the scene. He explained that he was a sewer cleaner, and had discovered a disused drain which he found ran right into the bank vaults. He had stolen nothing, so the bank gave him a reward, which, it was whispered, ran into thousands, for his honesty.
The most successful thief the bank ever had to deal with was Bidwell, an American, who arrived here with his gang in 1871. He distributed his agents all over the country, buying up genuine bills that could be manipulated, and then paid into the bank a bona fide bill of Rothschild’s for £4,500, saying that he was going to start making Pullman cars in England. Following this he paid in forged bills to the value of over £102,000, and paid the amounts to himself under the name of Warren at the Continental Bank. This great fraud might have gone on longer than it did, had the delinquents not forgotten to put the dates on two of the bills, whereupon they were returned to Messrs. Rothschild for rectification. Then the fraud was discovered, and the thieves caught just as they were starting for the continent with their spoil.
When you enter the bank by any door four pairs of eyes watch you, though you are unaware of this fact. Situated close to the doors are hiding-places in which are four guardians of the bank. You cannot see them, but they can watch you with the aid of reflecting mirrors in which they can see your entrance and exit, and every movement from the time you enter the portals of wealth to the moment you leave them.—London Saturday Journal.
Tx*
Paying Teller Commits Suicide
New York, December 14.—While being driven to his home in Plainfield, N. J., from the railway station late to-day, William L. Murray, for many years paying teller of the Empire Trust Company of this city, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
It appears that Murray, shortly after reaching the offices of the trust company to-day. complained of feeling ill and, yielding to the advice of President Leroy W. Baldwin, started for home.
Murray’s acquaintances are at a loss to account for a motive in the tragedy. President Baldwin said:
“His act is utterly inexplicable. We have had an examination of his accounts made and find that his cash is absolutely correct.”
THE CHICAGO BANKER
28
work to feel its power. Stevenson said we should say a grace for a friend. “Strangers and beggers are from Jove,” wrote Homer to inculcate kindness of heart. Our friends seem more especially to be heaven-sent.
V*
“Bertrand of Brittany”
The new story by Warwick Deeping, published by Harper Bros., New York, is “Bertrand of Brittany,” a mediaeval story, a tale of knights and tourneys, single combats, and trials of champions, of chivalry, adventure, and heroism. Bertrand is the ill-favored elder son of a noble family, whose boyhood is dwarfed by lovelessness and ridicule, but one day a little girl, Tiphaine, quickens him to his first heroic deed. After that Bertrand is revealed as captain of a roving band of fighters, a plunderer, and a companion of worthless women, until the band attacks a house in the forest, and the defenseless woman they find is Tiphaine. Again she turns Bertrand to a better part, and another woman, not a good woman, who loved him no less, frees him of herself by tragic sacrifice. He disbands his faithful men, then defaulting from honorable combat to save the name of a youth afraid to fight, because the lad was Tiphaine’s brother, becomes shorn of his
“Catchwords of Friendship”
“Catchwords of Friendship,” a collection of two hundred sentiments in verse and prose, published by A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, is a handsomely ornamented edition.
Friendship is love without wings.—French Proverb.
The only way to have a friend is to be one. —Emerson.
The best elixir is a friend.—William Som-merville.
If we have no friends, we have no pleasure. —Lincoln.
God will not love thee less because men love thee more.—Tupper.
Choose him whose life and manner of speech please you.—Seneca.
Scorn no man’s love, though of a mean degree : Love is a present for a mighty king.— Herbert.
These are some of the sentences taken from this excellent book, which is full of similar sayings of the wise and witty great men of the past. They are all calculated to make the sacred relationship of friendship shine the brighter. Cicero, the most eloquent of the Romans, wrote a treatise, “On Friendship,” but one need not be a philosopher or read a learned
Tales of the
Bank of England
but he managed to swindle the bank out of more than £60,000 before he slipped into the hands of the law in a curious manner. He used to dress in a long black cloak which generally covered the lower part ot his face, and, although he employed more than a dozen agents, none had ever seen him out of his disguise.
It was one of these agents who turned upon him. Realizing that the man was making a fortune, he lay in wait for him and slunk into the corner of a doorway when the muffled figure drew near. Then leaping upon him he tore away his disguise and threatened to betray him to the police unless he acceded to certain preposterous terms. Price refused, so his agent carried out his word, and two months later the arch criminal was convicted and hanged.
Only one man has succeeded in breaking into the bank and this happened about 30 years ago. One day the directors received a letter from an anonymous person saying he would meet any person the bank liked to appoint in the bullion rooms at midnight on a date fixed, but that the person keeping the appointment must not be armed. At first it was thought to be a hoax, but as a precaution detectives searched the bullion vaults thoroughly, and were quite satisfied that under no circumstances could a man enter those rooms; but they waited all through the night, and beyond hearing a peculiar scraping noise which they attributed to rats, they heard and saw nothing.
A week later the bank directors were staggered at receiving a box in which lay several securities from the bank vaults, and inclosed was a note saying that if the directors would send a man to the vaults at midnight on the same day, the writer would meet him there after having broken in from the outside.
Accordingly three men went down into the vaults with lanterns at midnight and waited. Presently they heard a scraping noise, and a light appeared at one end of the vaults, which vanished, however, on their approach. Then a man’s voice coming, it seemed, from right under their feet, told them to put out their own lanterns and he would appear. They did
There is no institution that .has more romance attached to it than the Bank of England. It has been nearly ruined on several occasions, it has been beset with thieves—one gang robbed it of over £100,000 30 years ago— forgery and frauds have been practiced upon it by the most accomplished criminals in history, and yet “safe as the Bank of England” is a saying which, in spite of the institution’s many ups and downs, is true to the letter.
Had it not been for a very smart ruse on the part of one of the directors the bank would have smashed over a century ago. This is what happened. A panic sprang up among bank-note holders, a panic that spread and spread before any one was aware of what was happening.
One morning, just after the bank opened, an angry and excited crowd thronged the street demanding cash for notes. There was actually double the money in notes in the hands of that mob to what there was gold in the bank, and the outlook was a bad one. Gold had to be got in to pay off every claimant, but that took time. So the directors sent men with notes into the crowd, whose claims they attended to first, and paid each claim in sixpences and shillings. Some men walked away with sacks of shillings over their backs, but the time gained by this method of payment saved the bank, and every claim was paid.
After this the bank decided to reassure its depositors by displaying in the bank windows and near the cashiers’ desks sacks overflowing with sovereigns, but the public did not know that the sacks were full of coal with only a layer of sovereigns on top!
The man who gave the bank the most trouble was one named Charles Price, and he was given the nickname of “Old Patch,” because he often wore a black patch over his right eye for no reason save as a disguise. He was one of the finest engravers in the world, beating even the bank engravers. He put forged notes into circulation with surprising skill, and a battle royal began between him and the bank.
Had he not been a master of disguise, he would have been caught long before he was,