lways are members of the London Clearing
House.

The English house, situated in Seymour Street, Euston Square, is an
extensive establishment, and accommodates 2,500 clerks. As I write, the
number under its roof is, by war conditions, reduced to about 900.
Serving with His Majesty's Forces are nearly 1,200, and about 400 have
been temporarily transferred to the railway companies, to the Government
service and to munition factories.

In 1842, when the Clearing House first began, the staff, as I have said,
numbered six, and the companies nine. Fifty-eight railway companies now
belong to the House, and the amount of money dealt with by way of
division and apportionment in the year before the war was 31,071,910
pounds. In 1842 it was 193,246 pounds.

CHAPTER IV.
FASHIONS AND MANNERS, VICTORIAN DAYS

The boy who is strong and healthy, overflowing with animal spirits,
enjoys life in a way that is denied to his slighter-framed, more delicate
brother. Exercise imparts to him a physical exuberance to which the
other is a stranger. But Nature is kind. If she withholds her gifts in
one direction she bestows them in another. She grants the enjoyment of
sedentary pursuits to those to whom she has denied hardier pleasures.

During my schooldays I spent many happy hours alone with book or pen or
pencil. My father was fond of reading, and for a man of his limited
means, possessed a good collection of books; a considerable number of the
volumes of _Bohn's Standard Library_ as well as _Boswell's Life of
Johnson, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Butler's Hudibras, Bailey's
Festus, Gil Blas, Don Quixote, Pilgrim's Progress, the Arabian Nights,
Shakespeare_, most of the poets from _Chaucer_ down; and of novels,
_Bulwer Lytton's, Scott's, Dickens_' and _Thackeray's_. These are the
books I best remember, but there were others of classic fame, and I read
them all; but not, I fear to much advantage, for though I have read many
books it has been without much method, just as fancy led, and study,
memory and judgment have been little considered. Still, unsystematic
reading is better than no reading, and, as someone has said, "a phrase
may fructify if it falls on receptive soil."

I never in my boyhood or youth, except on short visits to relatives,
enjoyed the advantage, by living in the country, of becoming intimate
with rural life. We resided at Derby in a terrace on the outskirt of the
town, much to my dislike, for monoto