It would be impossible to describe how Mr. Bright and Mr. Walter enlarged my mind. They did not do it on purpose, or in an improving manner, but they just showed me, in casual conversation, their knowledge of life and its realities and the things that matter and the things that do not. And over it all was cast a mantle of easy tolerance and patience with the fools who came to insure, and the idiots who didn’t understand the very rudiments of the science, and the occasional shady customers, who gave wrong change and pretended they had made a mistake, and so on. It was the hand of steel in the velvet glove with Mr. Bright. I should think he must have been the hardest man to score off in the entire Apollo. His repartee was of the deadliest sort, and, on principle, he never allowed himself to be worsted in argument. You might have described his line of action as a combination of the _suaviter in modo_ with the _fortiter in re_; while Mr. Walter trusted almost entirely to the _suaviter_ style, combined, of course, with a sense of the ludicrous which constantly enabled him to see funny things that nobody else saw. He was a mine of rich and rare quotations from the dramatists, and would apply these with an aptitude little short of miraculous. He would make puns at a moment’s provocation, and his draughtsmanship, in the impressionistic style, was such that he would make a lightning sketch of a man to his very face, while engaged in insuring his household goods. Occasionally Mr. Harrison felt called upon to check the universal hilarity; but he always did it with reluctance, for he also had a keen sense of humour, especially for jokes involving the Irish dialect. Into this cheerful and exhilarating hive of industry I came, to find everybody most kindly disposed towards me. The work was, of course, hard; but it was lightened by occasional gleams of Mr. Bright or Mr. Walter; while another most excellent and genial man also came and went. He flitted in and out mysteriously, and proved to be called Mr. Macdonald. He was, therefore, of Scottish origin, and his work concerned the mysteries of Life Insurance. The science is even more abstruse than Fire Insurance, and needs what is known as the actuarial instinct. This must be rare, for I heard Mr. Bright declare to Mr. Macdonald that the great actuary is born, not made. Then there were also surveyors—men of special knowledge—who also came and went, and other junior clerks, who were rather more austere to me than the senior ones. It was here, on the third day of my visit, that Mr. Bright kindly corrected my views with regard to demand and supply and other pressing questions of the day.