saving of expenditure could be
effected, which would ensure an additional dividend of three per cent.
Well, the thing looked so feasible that I wrote for and obtained five
shares, thinking I had done a sensible thing. A few months afterward a
West-end firm offered me a large number of shares at par, stating that
the company were about to pay a dividend, and that the profit on the
year's earnings would be some fifty per cent. However, I did not accept
the promising offer, and I thought no more of the matter. In January of
this year a gentleman sent me a circular offering me shares at a shilling
under par, assuring me that the company was about to pay a dividend of
ten per cent. in the course of the next week. Again I declined to
increase my holding, and it is well I did, as no dividend has been paid,
although the circular stated that the business was of "a most profitable
nature," and "sure to considerably increase in value in the course of a
few months." Since then a Manchester firm has twice written to me to
offer the pound shares at sixteen shillings each. These tempting offers
I have declined, and the promised dividend seems as far off as ever.
Surely outside brokers who put forward such lying statements ought to be
amenable to law, as well as the promoters of the company itself. To my
great disgust, since the above was written I have received another letter
from another outside firm, offering me fifty shares in the precious
company at thirteen shillings a share. The writers add, as the dividend
of ten per cent. will be paid almost immediately, they are well worth my
attention. I suppose this sort of thing pays. The worst of it is that
the class thus victimised are the class least able to bear a pecuniary
loss. I happen to know of a case in which a man with an assumed name,
trading at the West End, gained a large sum of money--chiefly from
clergymen and widows--by offering worthless shares, certain to pay large
dividends in a week or two, at a tremendous sacrifice. As a rule the
victims to this state of things say nothing of their losses. They are
ashamed when they think how easily they have been persuaded to part with
their cash. It is time, however, that public attention should be called
to the matter, that the eyes of the public were opened, and that the game
of these gentry were be stopped.

CHAPTER XI.
THE OLD LONDON PULPIT.

I doubt whether the cynical old poet who wrote "The Pleasures o