When, therefore, you wish a person to whom your cheque is made payable to go to your banker’s and draw the money, you will be careful not to cross it. Practice, somehow, always seems at war with theory, and it is not by any means an unusual occurrence for a lady, after having deliberately told her banker not to pay cash for her cheque to the presenter, to indignantly inquire why he did not disobey her behest and do so. A prudent teller seldom descends to either argument or explanation, but calmly accepts such reproof as one of the amenities of his calling, and resigns himself philosophically to the inevitable. Not Negotiable Cheques. This description is somewhat misleading, for a cheque crossed /not negotiable/ is in reality negotiable, though not so fully as is the one that has been discussed in the foregoing division. The distinction, however, is not difficult to grasp. Take a cheque with two parallel lines across the face simply. Now, if such a document be lost, and find its way into dishonest hands, a third party, who gives value in exchange for it, provided he have no guilty knowledge, has a good title against all the world, and can compel the drawer to pay him the sum for which it is made out. For instance, A draws a cheque for £20 payable to B, and crosses it /& Co/. B, the payee, after having written his name on the back of the cheque, loses it. C picks it up and passes it on to D, who gives him cash or goods in exchange for it. As B has indorsed the cheque he will have to bear the loss, even though he has got A, the drawer, to stop payment of it at his banker’s. But had the words “not negotiable” been added, D could not have enforced his claim, although he was a _bonâ-fide_ holder for value. A “not negotiable” cheque warns any holder for value thus:-- “You must, if you part with either cash or goods in exchange for this document, be prepared to take all risks upon your own shoulders. The crossing hereon gives you due notice that you must act upon your own responsibility, and the law, therefore, affords you no protection.” A business man cannot be too careful in dealing with a cheque thus marked; and unless he be well acquainted with the holder, he should decline to part with either cash or goods in exchange for it. One should never, even if one know that the drawer is a man of means, and that the signature upon the cheque is genuine, give value for it to a stranger, as there is always the danger of one’s having to make good the loss of any prior holder, who may have been defrauded, whilst if the payee cannot enforce his claim against the drawer, then a holder for value cannot.