It is because cashiers are relieved from all practical surveillance that so many of them are led to ultimately test the climate of Canada. A broker, speaking to the cashier some fine morning, says: “By the way, Jones, Erie is going to have a big rise; you’d better buy yourself a couple of hundred.” “Oh, I never speculate,” says Jones; “haven’t got the money to do it with.” “That’s all right,” says the broker, “I’ll buy a couple of hundred for you, and if there’s any loss you can make it good; but I’m sure you’ll make money on it.” Possibly the cashier accedes to this proposition, but more frequently, if he be a cautious and circumspect man, he uses the broker’s point in a different way. He has possibly seen the broker grow rich within a few years and envies him. Here is a tempting opportunity to make a handsome turn, for his salary is comparatively small, and he could put a few thousand dollars to exceedingly good use. It may be, then, that he borrows from a friend, or draws upon his own savings for money which he secretly deposits as margin with some stock firm and buys two hundred Erie. It goes down. His margin is exhausted. The brokers tell him it will probably decline very little more. But they want more margin. Right under his hands are big fat packages of bills of large denominations. What shall he do? If his brokers sell him out, the savings of years are gone in the twinkling of an eye. If he is a weak man, he argues, “Why not take a thousand dollar bill out of this package marked $50,000? It would never be missed.” Erie is sure to go up to-morrow, when he can withdraw the amount from his brokers and put it back in the bundle. He will be saved from every loss and nobody the worse for it. Unfortunately, things do not turn out that way. Erie goes lower. The thousand dollars is gone. What shall he do? His theft, for such it now plainly has become, will probably not be discovered for some time. What shall he do? Speculate in some other stock and try to make up the loss. And he does it. It is useless to pursue the theme any further. Grown more desperate from day to day, he plunges; his losses become too large to be longer concealed, and one day, fearing exposure, he takes to flight, possibly carrying off additional funds of the bank. It may be that the first money he took was not to speculate with but to pay some household bill. But it leads to the same result in the end. Now, if the president were in the habit of casually dropping around to the cashier’s desk and looking over his cash, the initial step in this march to ruin would be prevented. Suppose the president picks up hap-hazard any one of the many packages of bills and counts them over to see that they tally with the total marked on the wrapper. The knowledge that he is liable to do that at any time will deter the cashier from abstracting that first bill, and he is saved from the subsequent crime and disgrace.