they procure the signatures to the deed, one party holding so many letters of allotment? The system is this: one party signs the deed as often as disguise will shield him from discovery; then the practice is resorted to of procuring persons, from 15 years to 60, to accompany the holder of the banker’s receipt to the Railway Office, to sign the deed in such name as he may direct; for which, when done, he receives remuneration, varying from one shilling to ten, according to the premium the scrip may bear in the market.” There were several police cases as to writing and forging these bogus names, and prudent people were beginning to look shy at railway scrip. Here is a case which we can hardly understand nowadays. As long as Newspapers were stamped, it was a misdemeanour to allow anyone to read them, unless they purchased them, as it was considered a fraud upon the Revenue. On 23 Aug., in the Court of Requests, Kingsgate Street, a case came before the Commissioners for adjudication, in which a newsvendor summoned a person for a small sum, for “reading” the various newspapers. The plaintiff, in stating the case, said the defendant had been in the habit of seeing the papers daily, for which a penny a day was charged, and the present proceedings were taken to recover a balance due on that account. The Commissioners said that he could not recover, as he had been guilty of a gross fraud upon the Stamp Office in letting newspapers out for hire. The plaintiff: But he was in the habit of coming to my shop, and seeing them. The Commissioner: That don’t matter; it is a fraud upon the Stamp Office, and you render yourself liable to an information being laid against you for it. * * * * * Here is a little anecdote chronicled in the _Annual Register_ (6 Sep.): “REVERSE OF FORTUNE.—Edward Riley, living with his family in Hadley Street, Burton Crescent, having been proved next of kin to Maj.-Gen. Riley, who recently died at Madras, leaving property to the amount of £50,000, to the whole of which he has become entitled, has greatly amused the neighbourhood by his conduct. From having been but a workman in the dust-yard in Maiden Lane, he has, now, become a man of independence. Some days after his sudden acquisition of wealth, he called, in his cab, on a tailor in Seymour Street, and, taking him to the dust yard, desired him to measure the whole of the men in the yard for a suit of clothes, which being accomplished, he ordered them to go to a bootmaker, where they were all served. On the following Sunday, he ordered a butcher to supply each of them with a joint of meat. Riley has taken a house in Argyle Square; and, upon entering it, purposes to give a dinner to all the dustmen in London, and illuminate the front of his house.”