The payment of a deferred annuity may be made in one sum, or it may be broken up into a number of small payments at regular intervals. You can, by a slight increase on the payment for a deferred annuity, secure the return of the purchase-money to your representatives in the event of your death before the commencement of the annuity, or to yourself, should you for any reason wish to be out of the bargain. A word of advice is given by a sensible writer to all who are life annuitants. “They should bear in mind,” she says, “to live well within their income, as generally the whole of their money is one of _life interest_, and there will be no fund to fall back upon to pay funeral expenses, doctors’ bills, wages, etc., when they die, but their savings.” Fire insurance, life insurance, and the purchase of annuities are amongst the sensible transactions of prudent and saving people. But sometimes the prudent and saving, quite through innocent misfortune, come down in the world, and have a difficulty in making both ends meet for the present, let alone providing for the future. Under these circumstances people without much experience, and especially women who are not business women, are very apt to fall a prey to the wiles of the professional money-lender. To the artful ways of the money-lending fraternity we shall devote what remains of this article. If anyone is in want of a little ready money she has only to turn over the morning papers, and she will there see a score of advertisements headed “Money,” and all offering “loans on easy terms.” How is she to know, unless she has been told, that these petty money-lenders are one of the most serious evils of our present state of society, and that there are hundreds of them preying on the ignorance, the impulsiveness, and the necessities of their fellow-creatures? “There is considerable variety,” says a writer in the _Leisure Hour_, “in the bait used by these angling money-lenders, but great sameness in the general form of the cruel hook by which poor silly fish are caught. Some of the advertisements are from ‘loan offices,’ others from ‘private gentlemen’ who are ‘willing to advance money’ and who have ‘no connection with loan offices.’ They all seem to have unlimited resources, from £2 to £1,000 being at the disposal of every borrower. The invitations are to respectable persons, male or female, in town or country; distance no object; personal application preferred, but not necessary. ‘Strict secrecy and prompt despatch’ are usually promised; answers to application ‘by return of post’ and money sent ‘at a day’s notice.’ So obliging are these gentlemen, ‘forms will be sent _gratis_,’ and in some cases the borrower is assured there are ‘no law costs’ and ‘no office fees.’ More convenient still there are ‘no securities required.’ To borrow is an easy matter after all.