It is not surprising, after seeing this veritable "mine of wealth," that the coal-works are so thickly dotted about; for if any one possesses what would elsewhere be considered an insignificant patch of ground, this rich measure makes it well worth while to erect machinery and sink shafts.

It would be beneficial, I think, to the colliers if, after toiling all day, and being blackened over with coal-dust, the Japanese custom of getting into a tub was more frequently resorted to. Very often in the evening you may see men who bave returned from their work as black nearly as chimney-sweeps, with just the oval of their faces partially washed, and which, set in the sooty framing of smoke and dirt, makes them look worse than if they had not washed themselves at all. They are rather fond of having their shirt-fronts open; so that there is generally a full exhibition of their neck and chest, showing where the streams of perspiration have been running down, leaving marks something like the pattern on a dark moiré-antique. On a Saturday evening there is certainly something done towards getting the dirt off more effectually, and often in the summer time by the young men getting into the canal, and there performing their ablutions; but purifying the person generally after working, as they do, stripped to the waist, in an atmosphere laden with coal-dust, seems almost essential to health and comfort, and yet is an undertaking a collier never thinks of entering upon every day.

Our way back to the station leading through some of the back streets, and past several rows of workmen's cottages, there was a good view of the weekly cleaning-up that was going on. Many of the houses were already “tidied,” fit for the coming Sunday, and even a considerable space in front of the door swept up in an orderly manner. Others were progressing, but not so efficiently, as the inmates appeared to be adding considerably to the filth already accumulated in the road by leaving the result of all their mopping and sweeping close to the door-step, or at such a distance as it could be thrown without the trouble of crossing the threshold. There were some houses, however, which had not been commenced upon yet; and I was told that it was not uncommon to find a few of the women commencing preparations at ten o'clock on a Sunday morning, when the rest were thinking of going to church or chapel.

It was now getting late in the evening; but the people seemed stirring about more briskly than ever, and many of the children were playing about the roads, as though they were not at all afraid of being fetched in and sent to bed at any regular time.

On reaching the station, it was thronged with people going and coming by the last trains; and I was not at all sorry when the engine steamed up, and quickly carried us away out of the Black Country once again into the fresh, breezy air, where the "pits" were not deep-sunk shafts, but simply holes of water for the cattle, and the "fields" not of coal, but arable and pasture.

A Frugal Marriage.

I SUPPOSE that we have all of us some sort of acquaintance with the firm of Hunker, Munker, and Co., of Great Boodle Street, S.W., Bankers; for it must surely be the right thing to say of them, that they are very eminent in the Banking World-whatever the observation may mean, and I for one am by no means sure that I am in possession of its precise significance. But I think that we, all of us, know Messrs. Hunker, Munker, and Co., at least by name; some of us may even know Munker by sight (Hunker has been dead many years now; he was removed by gout in the stomach from Great Boodle Street to an elegant edifice of white marble, in an architectural point of view presenting a façade something between a miniature Greek temple and a slice of a cottage ornée, in Kensal-Green Cemetery),-tall, thin, melancholy man, Munker, aristocraticlooking, I am informed by competent judges, with cheeks that droop flabbily and pendulously over his hard stiff white kerchief, heavy eyelids, half hiding small bloodshot black eyes, a nose with a tendency to redness of hue, and of a swollen, shapeless pattern, a rather lipless mouth, depressed into a pucker at its each corner. He dresses in black always, -perhaps in perpetual mourning for the departed Hunker,-in tight black, which exhibits to perfection the colossal proportions of his knees; he has large hands and feet,-on the latter a phenomenal development of knobs and bosses; and a crimson watch-ribbon at his fob points to the hidingplace of his watch, just as in suburban gardens a floating strip of paper marks where mignonette-seed has been buried, and the perfumed plant may some day be expected to emerge. Some of us, a small minority, have now and then received one of the eminent firm's lilac-coloured cheques, as good as gold those cheques surely, and very nearly as beautiful looking, with every figure and letter the nucleus, as it were, of an intricate cobweb of flourishes, the arabesqued parallelogram for the signature being a singularly happy portion of the design, and the whole a crowning piece of exquisite handiwork on the part of the engraver. Some, a still smaller minority, may have even had accounts open in their names in the books of Messrs. Hunker, Munker, and Co.; may have even possessed balances in the firm's coffers, and valuables in the firm's cellars. But these are people whom I have only to congratulate; any other sort of remark in regard to them, coming from me, would be out of place and uncalled for.

may

Hunker, Munker, and Co.'s bank in Great Boodle Street was no more like one of those noisy joint-stock City banking institutions, than a quiet family-hotel, with an evangelical head waiter, a testament and hymn-book in every bed-room, and wax-candles, well charged in the bill, resembles a Whitechapel public-house reeking with gin and gas, and crammed with intoxicated clients. There was no hurry about Hunker's, no noise, no

his

confusion,-nothing so vulgar nor so ill-bred. Entering their large office, you felt irresistibly inclined to remove your hat and assume a devout aspect; for it was more as though you had wandered accidentally into a church, than walked purposely into a counting-house. There was a cool, calm, devotional air about the place, and something, though how I cannot explain, of that peculiar damp earthy smell which one has got to connect with places of worship. Could it be that Hunker, Munker, and Co. buried their dead clerks in the cellars below the office? There was a functionary, too, at a greatly elevated desk at the end of the room, who pored over a large ledger, and had a bald head and a white neck-tie, and might, therefore, fairly have been taken for a clergyman preparing to read the lessons, a Nonconformist minister probably, as he wore no surplice. And many beadle associations clothed the sandy-whiskered porter at the door; certainly all the dignity of the beadle, if not something more, supposing that to be any way possible. He wore a livery of purple turned up with crimson, and upon this a profuse eruption of brass buttons had broken out. His ostensible occupations were, to sit near the door and prevent the intrusion of improper characters, just as at church entrances, to cough noisily now and then by way of reminding the firm of presence, to move heavily about and put coals on the fire occasionally, and to read the Times newspaper straight through, and get off by heart that portion of it particularly devoted to the news of the money-market and what is called generally City intelligence. In reality, I believe that this porter-whose name, by the way, was M'Laughlin-Alexander Bogle M'Laughlin-did very much more. I believe that he ruled the whole establishment, from little Dickson, the last junior clerk (late of Dr. Swishman's seminary for young gentleman, Brush House, Hammersmith), right up, through the Co., to Munker himself. I believe that M'Laughlin really constituted the bank, was well known and appreciated in that capacity in the City, and thought very highly of in consequence. I believe him to have been one of the highest authorities, if not the highest, upon financial questions that this country has ever produced; and at one time nothing would have surprised me less than to have learnt that on the occasion of a crisis of commercial difficulty and monetary embarrassment, when the strings that tie round the national budget and moneybags had somehow got twisted into an inextricable tangle and aggravated double knot, it would not have surprised me, I say, at such a time to have learnt that M'Laughlin had been sent for by the head of H. B. M.'s Government (his livery was uncommonly like a Windsor uniform, I must say), that he had seen through the thing at a glance, had rapidly put the whole business safe on its legs again, restored universal confidence, produced a glut of money and general prosperity, refused a baronetcy and a pension, and returned to his seat in Great Boodle Street, to open and shut the door, put on the coals, cough, read the Times, awe the clerks, and manage the firm of Hunker, Munker, and Co. in his usual admirable manner. There was a chapel-look, too, about the dark mahogany counters and the

screened seats at the back, like family pews, while the clerks generally wore a congregational aspect; their manner was so sedate it was almost pious, and they were so smoothed, and brushed, and white-neckclothed and wristbanded. They replied to inquiries addressed to them across the counter in gentle murmuring accents, just as they would utter the responses at church, and they handed money to those who came for it with a hushed, earnest suavity, that had something about it of the nature of alms-giving, or some similar good work. No hurling about sovereigns with a copper coal-scoop, no fierce inquiry as to "how you would have it," no violent indenting of the counter with a heavy bringing-down of half-crowns upon it,-nothing of that angry turbulent manner which I and some others have encountered at other banking establishments east of Temple Bar, where it always seems to me that the clerks who attend to my requirements do so strongly against their will, and under indignant protest, and with an only half-hidden desire to fight me, and be avenged upon me, and punch my head, to speak particularly, at the very earliest opportunity.

And how, pray, did I come to know all this about Hunker's bank and Hunker's people, as the clerks of the bank were often called collectively, when, indeed, they were not denominated derisively by profane City clerks of less-cared-for morals Hunker's "pet lambs," or "Hunker's choir,” or "Hunker's Sunday-school children”? No; it was not the extent of my business transactions with the firm of Hunker, Munker, and Co. that gave me this knowledge. I will admit that frankly at once. But was not little Latherstone, my old friend and schoolfellow-(he was called Ginger at school, on account-boys are so rude and severe upon personal peculiarities-on account of his red hair,- for it was red, distinctly red,-though I am his friend who say it; as an honest man, I cannot bring myself to call it auburn)-was not little Latherstone, my old friend and schoolfellow, a clerk at Hunker's years ago, at the time of which I am narrating? and did he not-as of course, as my friend, he was bound to put me into possession of his manner of life at Hunker's, and the style of the proceedings there generally, and what Munker said and did, and how he looked when he said and did it; and all about senior cashiers and junior cashiers, and tills and pass-books, and concerning the great question as to whether Bopps -how every body did hate Bopps! he was the bald-headed functionary at the elevated desk-as to whether Bopps was really one of the "Co.,” or simply a clerk like every body else, for all his putting his back up so high; and all about little Dickson, and the wigging he got for hiding the gooseberry-tart in the till; and M'Laughlin, and full particulars concerning him, and how some thought him plainly an ass, though he did look so wise, and so on?

Of course Latherstone had in exchange similar confidences from me; but I need not stop to catalogue these, as they have little bearing on this relation. I may say simply that I was then serving my articles in the offices of Messrs. Swinfen, Sawyer, and Co., the Parliamentary agents, Whitehall, and that I occupied slatternly apartments in a street bounded

on the north by the Strand, and on the south, at high tide by the Thames, at low tide by a large expanse of mud; with a coal-merchant's yard at the back of the house, or the east, and in the front, or west I think I may say, a perpetual Punch-and-Judy show, for really entertainments of that character were always blockading my windows, and intercepting all prospect from them.

There were few specialties about my life here that I need chronicle, unless it be perhaps the uncontrollable habit of my landlady to empty every bottle she approached, including the cruets, and to debit me regularly eighteenpence per week for mending my socks,-a charge which I have since had reason to believe was excessive.

Latherstone was an orphan. He was christened Thomas, after his maternal uncle the Rev. Thomas Tobias Bosson, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Rector of Binchcomb-Bishop, Knogley, near Mottleham, Sussex. I had seen him once,-a short, stout man, with a fine double-chin, black eyebrows, a ruddy complexion, and a habit of shutting one eye, as though brought on by incessant winking in his youth, or continual peering through a telescope. He let the Rectory at BinchcombBishop, lived at the wheelwright's cottage up the village, and was saving money, people said. "He's an awful beggar at mathematics," Latherstone once confided to me. In fact, I discovered afterwards that the Rev. Thomas had one day opened fire upon his nephew, by way of testing his acquirements. Perhaps they were inclined at Lexicon House to neglect mathematical in favour of classical pursuits. Certainly the Rev. Thomas had speedily raked my friend fore and aft, dismasted, and nearly sunk him. "Poor Tom has no brains," he said. Such the verdict he arSo Tom, as a junior clerk, entered the office of Hunker, Munker, and Co. in Great Boodle Street.

rived at.

I am bound to say that I think the Rev. Thomas rather underrated my friend on account of his unfortunate inability to reach any high mathematical standard. The rector, after that examination, was inclined to regard his nephew not so much unkindly as purely from an unintellectual point of view. He utterly ignored poor Latherstone's mind, though he was not unwilling to recognise his possession of a body, an appetite, a digestion, and other human attributes. He would often send up a hamper of game from the country, and would write to him, "Come down to Binchcomb-Bishop, my dear nephew, before the strawberries go;" "Come here and help eat apples; the orchard's chock full;" and so on.

There was one supposititious advantage that attached itself to young gentlemen in the service of Messrs. Hunker, Munker, and Co. Their moral welfare, as it was called, was scrupulously cared for; or, to express this in the words of the young gentlemen themselves, the shop was kept constantly before them, and their noses held tightly to the grindstone. The junior clerks resided in the house in Great Boodle Street.

"My eye is constantly upon them," Munker had been heard to say. "I never lose sight of a young man who has once entered my service