Let me give another case out of my own personal experience. Last year I received a prospectus of a company that was formed to purchase the business of a firm which had an immense number of shops engaged in carrying on a business in various parts of the metropolis. A firm of accountants reported that the gross returns of the firm in 1894 amounted to over £103,000, and it was added that the profit of the company would admit of annual dividends at the rate of nine per cent., and allow of £1,300 for the expenses of management and reserve. It was further shown that a considerable saving of expenditure could be effected, which would ensure an additional dividend of three per cent. Well, the thing looked so feasible that I wrote for and obtained five shares, thinking I had done a sensible thing. A few months afterward a West-end firm offered me a large number of shares at par, stating that the company were about to pay a dividend, and that the profit on the year’s earnings would be some fifty per cent. However, I did not accept the promising offer, and I thought no more of the matter. In January of this year a gentleman sent me a circular offering me shares at a shilling under par, assuring me that the company was about to pay a dividend of ten per cent. in the course of the next week. Again I declined to increase my holding, and it is well I did, as no dividend has been paid, although the circular stated that the business was of “a most profitable nature,” and “sure to considerably increase in value in the course of a few months.” Since then a Manchester firm has twice written to me to offer the pound shares at sixteen shillings each. These tempting offers I have declined, and the promised dividend seems as far off as ever. Surely outside brokers who put forward such lying statements ought to be amenable to law, as well as the promoters of the company itself. To my great disgust, since the above was written I have received another letter from another outside firm, offering me fifty shares in the precious company at thirteen shillings a share. The writers add, as the dividend of ten per cent. will be paid almost immediately, they are well worth my attention. I suppose this sort of thing pays. The worst of it is that the class thus victimised are the class least able to bear a pecuniary loss. I happen to know of a case in which a man with an assumed name, trading at the West End, gained a large sum of money—chiefly from clergymen and widows—by offering worthless shares, certain to pay large dividends in a week or two, at a tremendous sacrifice. As a rule the victims to this state of things say nothing of their losses. They are ashamed when they think how easily they have been persuaded to part with their cash. It is time, however, that public attention should be called to the matter, that the eyes of the public were opened, and that the game of these gentry were be stopped. CHAPTER XI. THE OLD LONDON PULPIT.