As I see these old landmarks disappear one by one from the face of the Metropolitan area, I experience a pang of bereavement as at the death of an old friend. The site upon which the demolished Kilpack’s once stood is now occupied by the premises of a draper. I never had much to do with the money-lending fraternity. I tried on one occasion to borrow fifty of Sam Lewis. I may mention at once that I did not succeed. But my visit on the occasion to 17, Cork Street established a friendship between Sam and myself which continued until his death. I have heard a good many stories about the rapacity of Sam in his professional capacity. His critics forget to estimate the risks which he continually took, and when one remembers the sort of men his principal “clients” were, and the eventual destination of the millions which the worthy Sam accumulated, it must be admitted that the public has benefited by the transactions. Had the vast sums of interest which Sam Lewis hauled in from clients like Ailesbury percolated through other channels, Society would not have been a halfpenny the better. As it was, the Lewis millions went in the end to benefit hospitals and other great public charities. Sam left a lot to be disposed of in this way, leaving the bulk of his little savings to his wife. That lady did not survive her husband by many years, and her will added enormously to the benefactions devised by her husband. In the testamentary acts of both husband and wife the Christian charities were as liberally treated as were those distinctively Jewish. Lewis was a dapper, well-dressed little man, with a bald head and a smile of winning quality; indeed, all Sam’s qualities were winning qualities. His offices were on the first-floor of the house next door to the Blue Posts in Cork Street, and impecunious _flâneurs_ emerging from the Burlington Arcade were often blessed by a sight of the back of Sam’s head as he leaned against the window talking to some “forlorn and shipwrecked brother” intent on discovering the wherewithal on which to “take heart again.” Lewis began life as a traveller in real and sham jewellery, to which he added, as time went on, some little adventures on his own account in the tally-man arena of British enterprise. The most melancholy young man I ever saw was his clerk—one Gilbey by name. Whether this young man’s melancholy was constitutional or was caused by his acquaintance with the seamy side of Society, or by the monotonous filling up of bills for Sam’s clients to sign, I never could make out. Sam’s chief jackal was one Alfred Snelling, whose office was in a little house looking down Savile Row.