rage of
sixteen pounds to each depositor. These savings were made out of a daily
pay of one and threepence and a penny for beer-money, or equal to about
nine and sixpence a week, subject to sundry deductions for extra
clothing. Again, the men of the Royal Engineers--mostly drawn from the
skilled mechanical class--had saved nearly twelve thousand pounds, or an
average of about twenty pounds for each depositor. The Twenty-sixth
regiment of the line (Cameronians), whose pay was a shilling a day and a
penny for beer, saved over four thousand pounds. Two hundred and fifty
men of the first battalion, or one-third of the corps, were depositors
in the savings bank, and their savings amounted to about seventeen
pounds per man.

But this is not all. Private soldiers, out of their small earnings, are
accustomed to remit considerable sums through the post office, to their
poor relations at home. In one year, twenty-two thousand pounds were
thus sent from Aldershot,--the average amount of each money order being
twenty-one shillings and fourpence. And if men with seven shillings and
seven-pence a week can do so much, what might not skilled workmen do,
whose earnings amount to from two to three pounds a week?

Soldiers serving abroad during arduous campaigns have proved themselves
to be equally thoughtful and provident. During the war in the Crimea,
the soldiers and seamen sent home through the money order office
seventy-one thousand pounds, and the army works corps thirty-five
thousand pounds. More than a year before the money order system was
introduced at Scutari, Miss Nightingale took charge of the soldiers'
savings. She found them most willing to abridge their own comforts or
indulgences, for the sake of others dear to them, as well as for their
own future well-being; and she devoted an afternoon in every week to
receiving and forwarding their savings to England. She remitted many
thousand pounds in this manner, and it was distributed by a friend in
London,--much of it to the remotest corners of Scotland and Ireland. And
it afforded some evidence that the seed fell in good places (as well as
of the punctuality of the post office), that of the whole number of
remittances, all but one were duly acknowledged.

Again, there is not a regiment returning from India but brings home with
it a store of savings. In the year 1860, after the Indian mutiny, more
than twenty thousand pounds were remitted on account of invalided men
sent back