122 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



high their rents ; and that, on the other hand, farmers on 

 sterile farms were not thriving, however moderate the 

 demands of the landlord. It was more melancholy, but 

 not less instructive, to learn from authorities whose evi- 

 dence could not be questioned, bills paid by small instal- 

 ments, or lying under protest, that the small-farm system, 

 so excellent in a past age, was getting rather unsuited for 

 the energetic competition of the present one ; and that 

 the small farmers a comparatively comfortable class 

 some sixty or eighty years before, who used to give 

 dowries to their daughters, and leave well-stocked farms 

 to their sons were falling into straitened circumstances, 

 and becoming, however respectable elsewhere, not very 

 good men in the bank. It was interesting, too, to mark 

 the character and capabilities of the various branches of 

 trade carried on in the place, how the business of its 

 shopkeepers fell always into a very few hands, leaving to 

 the greater number, possessed, apparently, of the same 

 advantages as their thriving compeers, only a mere show 

 of custom ; how precarious in its nature the fishing trade 

 always is, especially the herring fishery, not more from 

 the uncertainty of the fishings themselves, than from the 

 fluctuations of the markets, and how in the pork trade of 

 the place a judicious use of the bank's money enabled 

 the curers to trade virtually on a doubled capital, and to 

 realize, with the deduction of the bank discounts, doubled 

 profits. In a few months my acquaintance with the cha- 

 racter and circumstances of the business men of the dis- 

 trict became tolerably extensive, and essentially correct ; 

 and on two several occasions, when my superior left me 

 for a time, to conduct the entire business of the agency, 

 I was fortunate enough not to discount for him a single 

 bad bill. The implicit confidence reposed in me by so 

 good and sagacious a man was certainly quite enough of 



