I should like you to know more of this wonderful place; but it belongs to my life only inasmuch as it carries my messages so silently and rapidly that people hundreds of miles away can do business with me in the same hour, and the result is that many thousands of pounds pass through my hands in a day, which might otherwise have remained idle. You will possibly feel surprised to hear that on an average six millions of pounds[2] are daily passed in London, without a single coin being used, and without any inconvenience or fatigue; whereas such a sum as this, if paid in gold or silver, would necessitate the carrying backward and forward over many miles some hundred tons weight. Like many other gigantic transactions, it is brought about in an insignificant building in a court leading out of Lombard-street, and therefore close to my residence. It is not a mysterious place like the Stock Exchange, but its power of working is so wonderful as to be quite beyond the power of woman to take in. It transfers more money in one week than the whole quantity of gold coin in the kingdom amounts to; and not the least wonderful thing about it is that the entire work is performed by about thirty well trained clerks, in the most exact, regular, and simple manner. The place I am speaking of is the Bankers’ Clearing House—not to be confounded with that in the Stock Exchange. It was established in 1775 by bankers who desired a central place where they might conduct their clearing, or balancing, and their needs led them to the invention of a simple and ingenious method of economising the use of money. Almost all their payments are in the form of cheques upon bankers. The system of clearing is quite as important in money matters as division of labour is in manufactures, and deserves a much more thorough explanation than I can give here; and my only excuse for mentioning it at all is to show you how wonderfully different my position is now, strengthened as it is by the development of science, knowledge, and experience, from what it was in my early days. While my transactions have increased a thousandfold, money, labour, and time have in an equal degree been economised. I thought myself very rich formerly with a fortune of £1,200,000, and I considered that I and my household had a great deal to do in the management of it, and the work which fell to my lot. Dear me! I can call back the picture of even a hundred and twenty years ago. My own house was so small that passers-by could scarcely recognise it; the population of London was only half a million, and there was but one bridge over the Thames connecting my side of the City with Southwark; and as to that mysterious building, the Stock Exchange, it did not exist. You know, also, for I have told you, that my directors only employed fifty-four secretaries and clerks, and that their united salaries did not exceed £4,350. The contrast between then and now is marvellous even to me.