The mystery that has always hung about this building has greatly increased since it has been in combination with the Exchange Telegraph Company of London, with all its scientific developments and its electric currents. Between this bureau and the Stock Exchange ghostly, silent messages pass the livelong day concerning the health, the value, the rise and the fall of the various stocks and funds, and in a few seconds these mysterious messages are wafted through the length and breadth of the land.

I am a curious, inquisitive old lady, and as there were many points in these mysterious proceedings I could not understand, I went to the bureau a short time back, and begged Mr. Wilfred King, the courteous and clever secretary of the company, to make them clear to me.

I was very interested in what he said about the rapidity with which the messages are transmitted. He assured me that the result of the last Derby was known all over London before the horses had had time to stop after they had passed the winning-post; and, again, that during the last Parliamentary session the debates, by means of this company, were known at the Crystal Palace before they reached the smoking-room of the House of Commons.

As I stood watching the clever instrument pouring out silently and persistently its yards of tape messages, I asked as a favour that Mr. King would cut off a piece, that I might show it to you. You will see that the language is conveyed by means of simple lines, over which he was so kind as to write the letters so represented—

[1]

The following little sketch will give you some idea of the instrument and its working:—

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.