This is the first opportunity I have had of meeting you Bank Presidents collectively, and when you are thawed out. I have met most of you, individually, when you were frozen stiff. I never supposed you could warm up, as you seem to have done, my previous impressions having been of the "How'd you like to be the iceman" order. Sometimes I have thought I'd almost rather go without the money than get a congestive chill in a Bank President's office, and have him gaze into my eyes, and read the inmost secrets of my soul, and ask unfeeling questions, and pry rudely into my past, and throw out wild suggestions about getting Mr. Astor to endorse for me, and other similar atrocities. And even if I succeed in deceiving him he leads me, crushed, humiliated and feeling like thirty cents, to a fly cashier, who, taking advantage of my dazed condition, includes in my three-months' note, not only Christmas and the Fourth of July, but St. Patrick's Day, Ash Wednesday and sixteen Sundays, so that, by the time he has deducted the interest, what's coming to me looks like a Jaeger undershirt after its first interview with an African _blanchisseuse_. That's the kind of thing the poet had in mind when he wrote--"I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows." I have observed that one's reception at a bank varies somewhat with the condition of the money market. Go in when money is easy and the President falls on your neck, calls you by your first name, and cheerfully loans you large sums on your "Balloon Common" and your "Smoke Preferred," and you go on your way rejoicing. The next day, news having arrived that a Gordon Highlander has strained a tendon in his leg while sprinting away from a Dutchman near Ladysmith, or an Irish lady _chef_ has sent home two pounds sterling to her family, money goes up to one hundred and eighty per cent. a minute, and you get a note requesting you to remove your "Balloon Common" and your "Smoke Preferred" and substitute Government Bonds therefor. And still you wonder at crime. But if you really want to know the meaning of the terms "Marble Heart" and "Icy Eye" go into one of these refrigerating plants for a loan when money is tight. It is prudent at such times to wear ear-muffs and red mittens fastened together by tape so they can't be lost, for you will need 'em. As soon as you reach the outer air--which will be in about a second--run home and plunge the extremities in hot water, and place a porous plaster on what remains of your self-esteem.