_Clerk._ Oh, only a few shillings. _Working Man._ Well, Sal, what do you think? _Working Lady (tossing her head)._ Oh, if it won't do us no 'arm, I 'spose we'd better. _Working Man._ It'll make the money right for you, Sal. _Working Lady._ Well, come on: it's all them thievish lawyers—it's another do to get money out of yer. The idea for the likes of us to go to church. Oh my! But a week or two afterwards the couple returned and produced their marriage lines. _Working Man._ Well, it's all right; we planked our money down, and we're wery much oblig'd to you for the suggestion. Sal's been a good 'un to me these 'ere twenty years, but it never occurred to us, or we'd 'a done it before. It jest made us both laugh outright when the parson chap harsks me if I'll 'ave 'er. It do seem ridic'lous, but the law is the law, and we ain't none the worse. Much obliged for the suggestion. Will you 'ave anythink, young man? But the clerk with stern probity declined, and said magnificently, “I am glad you have done the right thing: it is what you ought to have done twenty years ago.” The man he had evidently converted to a partial recognition of the value of Holy Matrimony, but he saw that the lady was hopeless from the first. The Savings Bank is evidently a powerful lieutenant to the Church in its insistence on the commercial benefits to be derived from baptism and matrimony. The lost book is often a fruitful source of curious explanations and experiences. The moment when we start saving any money is of course one for much personal satisfaction. In some cases it may even induce wild exhilaration. A lady wrote to the Controller this delightful letter: “Having joined your Bank I put my Bank Book in the fire. Will you please see to it.” Another depositor writes: “My wife and me was having some words and she broke the book in pieces.” And yet another in the same vein: “Through a falling out with my wife she tore the Bank Book. I enclose the Relics.” The husbands, however, do not always have it their own way, and one wife writes as follows: “I had a quarrel with my husband on the day I lost the book. He stole my book once before. He denied the same as he does now.” We must admit that the evidence against him is merely circumstantial. Another man takes a morbid view of the characters of church-goers. “As I left it in church I do not expect ever to get it back with some other matters.” People have often complained of the want of privacy at our post offices when we desire to transact confidential business there. But we do not all suffer from shyness or modesty. A lady writes: “I was not aware that any leaves came out of my book. I was travelling about so much that I sewed it up in my stayes, and I never took it out except in the Post Office.”