I will explain, for the benefit of any reader not conversant with financial transactions, that if John Russell, cotton broker in Savannah, ships a thousand bales of cotton to a firm in Manchester, England, the firm in Manchester authorizes him to draw a bill of exchange on their firm, payable at some London bank at three or six months' time, for the value of the cotton. We will say the price is L10,000. Russell draws ten bills for L1,000 each, say payable at the Union Bank of London. He gives these bills to a money broker in Savannah, who sells them on the Exchange and gets for them whatever the rate of exchange may then be on London. The president of the Georgia Central Railroad may have ordered a thousand tons of steel rail in England for his road, and to pay for them he orders a broker to buy for him bills on London to the amount of the cost of the rails. He purchases the Russell bills, and these bills of exchange he sends in payment to the steel rail manufacturers in England, so, as a matter of fact, the president of the Georgia Central pays Russell for his thousand bales of cotton, but has the bills of exchange. So, in place of L10,000 in gold being freighted twice across the ocean, the ten pieces of paper cross only once. These ten bills for L1,000 each, drawn on the Union Bank of London at six months, in due time are presented, duly accepted and paid at maturity by the bank. Instead of commercial notes or bills they are now known as acceptances, and are just as good as a bank note. Therefore, if the owner--no matter who it is--wants the money at once, any bank will discount all or either for the face value less the interest. In every commercial centre of the world these accepted bills are being discounted by banks and moneyed corporations for enormous sums, but by no bank in the world in such huge amounts as by the Bank of England. Their daily discounts run into the millions. What our plan was will be made clear later. [Illustration: A BILL OF EXCHANGE.] The evening of the day of my arrival in Paris found me on the express speeding to Paris. Two hours past midnight I was on the miserable little passenger steamer that plies across the chopping channel, and which I suppose has seen more of human misery than all the fleets that sail the Atlantic, for the channel has stronger counter currents, and wind, tide and currents seem ever to be in violent opposition, and here "E'er across the main doth float A sad and solemn swell, The wild, fantastic, fitful note Of Triton's breathing shell." And Triton (old Neptune's t'other name) makes all passers over this part of his realm pay ample tribute for "his fantastic, fitful notes."