to England; besides which there were eight regiments which
brought home balances to their credits in the regimental banks amounting
to L40.499.[1] The highest was the Eighty-fourth, whose savings amounted
to L9,718. The Seventy-Eighth (Ross-shire Buffs), the heroes who
followed Havelock in his march on Lucknow, saved L6,480; and the gallant
Thirty-second, who held Lucknow under Inglis, saved L5,263. The
Eighty-sixth, the first battalion of the Tenth, and the Ninth Dragoons,
all brought home an amount of savings indicative of providence and
forethought, which reflected the highest honour upon them as men as well
as soldiers.[2]

[Footnote 1: The sum sent home by soldiers serving in India for the
benefit of friends and relatives are not included in these amounts, the
remittances being made direct by the paymasters of regiments, and not
through the savings banks.]

[Footnote 2: The amount of the Fund for Military Savings Banks on the
5th of January, 1876, was L338,350.]

And yet the private soldiers do not deposit all their savings in the
military savings banks,--especially when they can obtain access to an
ordinary savings bank. We are informed that many of the household troops
stationed in London deposit their spare money in the savings banks
rather than in the regimental banks; and when the question was on a
recent occasion asked as to the cause, the answer given was, "I would
not have my sergeant know that I was saving money." But in addition to
this, the private soldier would rather that his comrades did not know
that he was saving money; for the thriftless soldier, like the
thriftless workman, when he has spent everything of his own, is very apt
to set up a kind of right to borrow from the fund of his more thrifty
comrade.

The same feeling of suspicion frequently prevents workmen depositing
money in the ordinary savings bank. They do not like it to be known to
their employers that they are saving money, being under the impression
that it might lead to attempts to lower their wages. A working man in a
town in Yorkshire, who had determined to make a deposit in the savings
bank, of which his master was a director, went repeatedly to watch at
the door of the bank before he could ascertain that his master was
absent; and he only paid in his money, after several weeks' waiting,
when ne had assured himself of this fact.

The miners at Bilston, at least such of them as put money in the savings
bank, were accustomed t