And I suppose a brainy man, with a good wife, and, what is almost as rare nowadays, a good bill of sale, can live on nothing for about as long as it can be done. That candid poet, Arthur Hugh Clough, pointed out many years ago that the ancient decalogue did not cover all our sinful modern ways, and amended the eighth to run thus: Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat When it's so lucrative to cheat. And surely we may ask, Why should this miserable cheat flourish among decent citizens of to-day? Should not a man or woman be made to trade in his or her own name? In a business community it is almost impossible to make adequate inquiries before you start trading, and why, if you come to think of it, should an individual desire to trade in any but his own name? The frauds that are committed may not be very serious, but all forms of cheating and sharp dealing are detrimental to trade, and trade, after all, is the basis of our national pre-eminence. It seems particularly undesirable in a nation that prides itself on its domestic purity that "the wife's name" should be a symbol of dishonesty. If we cannot attain to a decent code of commercial morality without it we shall have to ask our four-hundred-pound legislators for yet another statute. "One man, one name, and make him trade in it," would be well received by all the honest, rich and poor, throughout the country. I have dealt at some length with this question of putting goods in the wife's name because I doubt if folk whose business does not take them into the County Court have any idea how prevalent it is and what a very present help it is to the man who is living upon his neighbours by some semi-fraudulent business. Every now and then the setter of flat-traps catches a victim too strong and lusty to remain in the trap. The shoddy gold watch is returned, the bogus business is thrown back on the exploiter's hands, the company promoter who has annexed the savings of the victim by false promises is sued for damages for deceit. In some of these cases by pertinacity and the spending of more money a triumphant judgment will be obtained by the fly against the spider. But there it ends. When the high bailiff visits the web he is politely informed that it is part of the wife's separate estate, every thread in the web is covered by a bill of sale, and if you try to imprison the old spider for debt you would find the greatest difficulty in proving his means to the satisfaction of the Court. Bankruptcy has no terrors for the old fellow. You will probably find that he has been there before and rather likes its old-world dusty crannies and the peaceable formulae of its schedules and accounts.