The way these things worked a few years since, in the Stork Bank and the Water Works Bank in this city, is worthy of being told by way of illustration.
HUNGRY BEGGARS.
The cashiers of these banks thought themselves so firmly seated in power, that nothing could move them. By way of brevity, I will call them Jack and Bob; but let no one suppose that the impudent familiarity of using these barbarous corruptions of a Christian name, was ever permitted to any but themselves. The bad times—which in business parlance, in its proper construction, means, that period of time when the mischiefs designed by one party, or arising from the follies and imprudences of the other, are in course of developement—brought crowds of anxious applicants daily to the counter of the bank. They arranged themselves in rows along the walls, or by the side of the counter, with anxious faces, each one waiting for his turn, and as each received a negative, his eye flashed with anger, or his cheek blanched with despair; and while others would march up, to prefer their own claims, in the vain hope of better success, those behind occasionally peered out from the long line in which they stood, and cursed the gravity and self-possession of the cashier, while he held a long parley with his customer; and the last in the line sometimes betrayed, by the uneasiness of his limbs, that the vulgar saying of “the d——l take the hindmost,” was uppermost in his thoughts.
MONEY MADE BY FEEDING BEGGARS.
When men of business become dependent on borrowing, to meet their engagements, the daily supply becomes as necessary as daily food. The proverb tells us that a hungry man will break through a wall; and, to use a fashionable phrase, of some who do not understand their mother tongue, the cashiers were “au fait,” in this principle of natural philosophy. Their eager eyes scanned with solicitude the cadaverous countenances of the hungry applicants, to see where their scanty means of supply might be most profitably applied, and when occasionally, some one received permission to call again when the press was over, hope at once beamed in his eye, a smile played gently about his mouth, and had the cashier been a lady, he would have fallen on her neck and kissed her. Punctual to the hour, he returns and receives from the complacent lips of the cashier, the joy-giving intelligence—“Mr. A., we have so great a press upon us just now, that we find it impossible to meet the demand for discounts; but, if it will oblige you, I will take your notes at seven per cent. interest, and give you a check on Mobile at sight, and at par, in payment.”
“But I do not know what to do with it,” says Mr. A. “How will that relieve me?”
“Well, I don’t know, Mr. A., but I have understood that the Waterworks Bank is buying at a discount of five per cent. That is rather a large sacrifice to make, but it is the best that I can propose.”
THE DEATH-STRUGGLE.
“Hang the five per cent.,” thought A. to himself, “it will cost me but a hundred dollars, and I can pay my note;” and, to him, a day’s salvation from bankruptcy, was an age of happiness. The proposal was eagerly embraced, and while the Waterworks was buying the checks of the Stork on Mobile, Savannah, Columbus, &c., the Stork was buying those of the Waterworks; and mischief-makers have reported that they were all exchanged in the afternoon.
Mr. Eavesdropper, whose name implies that he attends more to other people’s business than his own, reports having overheard the following dialogue between the cashiers, at their afternoon meeting.