earnest, and on the following Tuesday I got to
the bank in good time. I didn't find it such an
easy matter though, to put my money away, even
now when I was there with it in my hand. There
was such a lot of people in the bank that there
was no getting near the counter for full a
quarter of an hour, and when at last I did get
to it, the clerks didn't seem inclined to take
any notice of me. Two or three times I said
to one of them that I wanted to put in three
pound ten, but he paid no attention, and always
turned to somebody else. An old woman with
half-a-crown cut me out first, and then I was
elbowed aside by a charity-boy with a shilling
all in coppers. They were regular customers,
and used to the banking business, I suppose, and
I wasn't. However, I got it in at last and
received my book, and I do assure you I felt a load
taken off my mind. When I showed the book
to Susan, she said, "That's right, George, and I
hope you'll go on with it." I fully intended to do
so then; but it's easy to intend, and not so easy
to carry your intendings out. It's like sitting
over a fire on a winter's night, and saying, "I'll
get up early to-morrow morning and do over-
time;" but when the morning comes, and you
peep out between the clothes and see the frost
upon the windows, it's very easy to find an
excuse for lying a little longer.

The evening song and the morning song don't
often agree. So it was with my saving. I had
always a pretty lively recollection of the trouble
it was to walk all the way to Welbeck-street
after my day's work, and then to have to push
my way through a crowd of old women, and
wait my turn at the counter. It's not worth
doing for a few shillings, I used to say to
myself; I'll wait until there's more of it, and then
put it in in a lump. So I put the shillings away
in the drawer until such time as they should
grow to be pounds; but owing to the key being
always handy they didn't, and what with
club-nights and sprees now and then, it never came
to be enough to be worth while taking down to
Welbeck-street. When Christmas-time came,
all I had in the bank was the three pounds ten
I first put in. However, that was something,
and as I was rather short just then, it would
come in handy to get the Christmas extras.
Three days before Christmas I went down to
the bank to draw the money out, promising
Susan to come straight home with it. You
may judge how mad I was, when the clerk told
me that I couldn't draw the money out without
fiving a week's notice. Here was a pretty go;
^usan at home waiting for the money to get in
the tea and sugar, the plums and currants, and
what not, and the cash not to be got until after
Christmas. "This sort of saving won't suit me,"
says I to myself; "there's too much ceremony
about it." I had to borrow the money from one
of my mates to get the Christmas dinner, and at
the end of the week I drew my money out of
Welbeck-street, and paid him back; and that
was the end of my account at that
savings-bank.

Next year, Susan belonged to a pudding-club
at the grocer's, and I belonged to a goose-club
at the Yorkshire Grey. We began to pay in
sixpence a week very shortly after Midsummer,
and, a few days before Christmas, Susan brought
home a parcel of groceries, and I got a goose,
and a bottle of gin, and a bottle of rum. We
didn't miss the money paid every week in
six-pences, and when the things came home, they
seemed like a gift. I said to Susan that I
thought this was better than putting money in
the savings-bank, where there was so much
ceremony, and Susan thought so too. But
when Susan's brother, John, who is a cashier at a
large linendraper's, came to dinner on Christmas-day,
and we told him how we had been saving,
he burst out a-laughiug. "What are you laughing
at?" I says. "What am I laughing at?"
he says, almost choking himself with a mouthful
of goose—"why, at you." "What for," I says.
"For being so jolly green," he says. "Jolly
green!" I says; " is it jolly green to lay by
money for a rainy day?—leastways, for
Christmas-day, when a family requires extras?"
"Fiddlesticks!" John says. "Let me ask you
a question, George." "Twenty," I says; "go
ahead, John." "Well," he says, "when did
you begin to pay into the goose-club at the
Yorkshire Grey?" "At Midsummer," I says.
"And you paid in sixpence every week for
twenty-six weeks?" "Yes," I says, "I did.''
"Which made thirteen shillings, George?"
"Exactly," I says. "Well," he says, "is the
goose and the liquor worth it?" "Judge for
yourself, John," I says. "Could I have bought
such a goose as that you are now partaking of
for less than eight-and-six in the shops?"
"No," he says, "I don't think you could."
"Very well," I says, " where's your fiddlesticks,
and how do you make me out jolly green?"
"Why this way, George," he says: "in the
first place, you've been losing the interest upon
your money for six months." "That's not
much," I says. "No," he says, "perhaps not;
but that's not all. I'll be bound to say, George,
if you'll only be candid enough to confess it,
that every time you went to the Yorkshire Grey
to pay in sixpence to the goose-club, you had a
glass of something?" "I don't deny it," I
says; "you can't well go to a public-house
without having a glass." "Sometimes two,"
he says. "Well," I says, "sometimes two;
perhaps three, when I happened to meet a
friend." "Then, let us say, George, that every
time you went to pay in sixpence to the club,
you spent, on an average, another sixpence on
drink." "It might be about that," I says.
"Very well then, George, upon your own
showing, your goose, and bottle of gin, and
bottle of rum, have cost you six-and-twenty
shillings, to say nothing of your loss of time,
and the injury to your constitution through
drinking more than was good for you.
"never thought of it in that way, John," I says.
"No, of course not, George," he says; "for
if you had thought of it in that way, yon
wouldn't have been such a fool as to do it."
"But you'll admit," I says, "that Susan has