As for the stories about people who are supposed to have given Thomas Coutts a guinea, as a consequence of his shabby appearance, they are too numerous for repetition. The most circumstantial is the following:--"Mr Coutts used to make periodical visits to a town in the vicinity of the country seat of one of his married daughters. On one of these occasions he had attracted the attention of a benevolent old gentleman, who, noticing the neat but somewhat worn apparel of the eminent banker, imagined that he had most probably seen better days, but that his actual financial condition was not very flourishing. The last time they met was Christmas time; and the benevolent old gentleman, no doubt warmed up with the prospects of the festivities of the season, dropped a guinea into the hand of Mr Coutts as he passed quickly by him, bidding him get a good dinner. Having discovered the name of his benefactor, Mr Coutts soon after invited him to his house, where he made himself known to him, and related the anecdote to his guests, letting them know how he had the guinea given to him, and saying he intended keeping it." This story of the guinea gathered strength with the years, one of the versions being that when the banker was in Brighton, visiting the Prince Regent, to whom he occasionally acted as financial adviser, he was sitting on the front when a lady, observing "his dejected appearance and shabby apparel, gave him a crown with which to get some breakfast, and promised to get her friends to help to buy him a dinner. The crown, of course, proved to be a crown token piece issued from the Coutts' Bank at the sign of 'The Three Crowns in the Strand,' but when the lady returned with her friends, and was just about to give the poor man his dinner money, the Prince Regent ran out from the pavilion, and slapping him on the back, called out, 'Tom Coutts, my boy, we have fined you a bottle for leaving your glass!'" [Illustration: NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE, FROM THE GARDENS.]