The business has been declining of late years, the cheap advertising stationers having done it injury with the public.

Consequently, up to the last week, the only surplus property possessed by Mr.Yatman consisted of the two hundred pounds which had been recovered from the wreck of his fortune.

This sum was placed as a deposit in a joint-stock bank of the highest possible character.
Eight days ago Mr.Yatman and his lodger, Mr.Jay, held a conversation on the subject of the commercial difficulties which are hampering trade in all directions at the present time.

Mr.Jay (who lives by supplying the newspapers with short paragraphs relating to accidents, offenses, and brief records of remarkable occurrences in general--who is, in short, what they call a penny-a-liner) told his landlord that he had been in the city that day and heard unfavorable rumors on the subject of the joint-stock banks.

The rumors to which he alluded had already reached the ears of Mr.Yatman from other quarters, and the confirmation of them by his lodger had such an effect on his mind--predisposed as it was to alarm by the experience of his former losses--that he resolved to go at once to the bank and withdraw his deposit.