Promoters of Companies and others whose business it is to finance without funds, have a friendly way of helping each other when pecuniary difficulties arise. Whether they want money to push on some new scheme, or whether only a much milder sum is required for daily expenses, they rarely refuse to put their names to stamped paper for each other. ‘Help me, and I’ll help thee,’ is held to be one of the standing articles of their social creed. And when a fairly well-to-do ‘guinea-pig’ becomes more or less intimate with these gentlemen, he is generally asked to join one or more of them in raising money by means of bills. Sometimes these useful substitutes for capital may be paid at maturity; but more often they are not met, and are replaced by similar documents. There are, however, occasions on which renewal of financial obligations is no longer possible, and when those who draw, or those who accept, have to book up without delay. Such was the lot of our friend whose short financial career is here briefly described. His name being no longer regarded as valuable, he was called on to find the funds for which he had made himself answerable. For a very short time his pension for three or four years was, so to speak, anticipated. He had given bills which he had not the ready-money to meet, and had to resort to loan offices, West End money-lenders, and other sources of raising money, which, together with the premiums he had to pay insurance offices, seeing that he could not get money without policies on his life, very soon utterly ruined him. He was, of course, made a bankrupt, and four-fifths of his pension was awarded to his creditors. To live on two hundred pounds a year is by no means an easy task to one who has never known the want of money; he dragged on a miserable existence for a couple of years, and then died from what might almost be called a broken heart.