Republic were the only two nations manifesting anxiety as to what the Khedive would do with his interest.

On the night of November 14, 1875, Frederick Greenwood, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, was dining at one of the London clubs with a prominent banker, who, in the course of dinner, casually remarked that news had just come to him to the effect that Ismail, pressed to the last ditch by his tremendous obligations, had decided to sell the only unpledged asset he had,-177,000 shares of the Suez Canal stock. It was thought a French syndicate of capitalists was negotiating for the purchase. Aware of the importance of this information, the journalist soon excused himself on some pretext, and hastened to Lord Derby, a member of the Disraeli cabinet. When this minister threw cold water upon the idea of a move to counter Paris, Greenwood, undiscouraged, sought the Premier himself, who, with the keen, vivid mind of a Richelieu, saw at once where England would benefit by the purchase and how his own political star would gain in the ascendant. At once a telegram was dispatched to Major-General Stanton, British Agent at Cairo, asking if the

news were true.

This message was delivered to Stanton the next morning, and he at once sought out Nubar Pasha, the Khedive's prime minister, though it was only in the late afternoon that he found him and learned that the tidings were correct in every particular. The British agent expressed such great surprise that England should not have been informed of a transaction to which she could not have been indifferent under any circumstances, and so impressed Nubar, by his insistence and earnestness, that he was promised all intercourse with the French bankers should be suspended until the midnight of November 18th, to afford sufficient time to communicate with Downing Street. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the almost malignant antagonism of Gladstone and Lord Derby to the entire project, the Prime Minister was negotiating with the Rothschilds as to financing the plan.

On the evening of November 18th, at half past seven o'clock, Stanton went to dinner at his hotel in great suspense. The limit of time given him in which to make final decision was fast approaching, and no word had yet arrived from London. As he

sat, restlessly toying with his food, and as the clock was striking eight, a telegram was brought to him from Disraeli to the effect that the British government was prepared to buy. With the enthusiasm of a man who feels that he plays no mean part in a drama momentous to the welfare of his country, the General at once started negotiations, and, on the 23rd, telegraphed London that the Khedive was willing to sell his 177,000 shares for $20,000,000. That same evening Disraeli accepted the offer, and on the 29th the deal was closed and the stock delivered to the British agent.

The English papers broke into a chorus of applause. The London clubs talked of little but the courage and spirit shown by the ministry. By one of the strangest paradoxes in history, the nation that originally sneered at the Suez undertaking had become, next to France, most largely interested in it financially. Another paradox lay in the fact that, if Mr. Gladstone, one of the most patriotic of Englishmen, had been in office these shares would certainly have been added to the 200,000 already owned across the Channel, and the waterway would have been irrevocably French. Instead, Great Britain, having purchased additional holdings from time to time, now owns some seventy per cent of the stock,-worth above $175,000,000,-so it is she, not France, who controls the Suez.

"And so" (as the old fairy tales open the final paragraph) history fulfilled a pictorial prophecy of thirty-five years back, in a Tenniel cartoon in Punch, second only to the immortal "Dropping the Pilot." The scene was cast amid the sands of Egypt. The solitary living figure was that of Disraeli in the guise of a Cook tourist. Beneath his arm, in lieu of the proverbial umbrella, he carried a monster key inscribed "The Key of India: Suez Canal." Upon his face was that indescribable half-smile, half-smirk of mingled cunning and exultation which Tenniel so well knew how to portray, as he looked up at the Sphinx, looming colossal in the background, upon whose granite countenance were an answering smile and a most obvious wink of congratulation.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

H. MERIAN ALLEN.

BANKING IN OLD ATHENS

But

If a man had money to spare in Athens, in the days when Aristophanes was bantering Plato with his "Woman's Parliament" and diverting the people with his "Wealth," he might take it to the treasury of the Parthenon, which had performed some of the functions of a savings-bank time out of mind. if he wanted the equivalent of checking account or some return for his money, with the measure of risk that that implied, he would take it to a banker, and of all these the chief in the city, "the Rothschild of his day," as someone has said, was Pasion, the fortunes of whose house and family a happy chance enables us to follow for nearly half a century.

This Pasion, once a slave, was evidently quite a conspicuous figure in the Athens of his day, and especially down-town in the Piræus, the commerical exchange for the export business that was the chief source of Athenian wealth, and, incidentally, of banking profits as well. Beginning as a clerk in his master's bank, and of foreign birth as that fact itself implied, he had worked his way up to a position combining some of the functions of confidential clerk and of cashier, and finally, after well earning his freedom, had succeeded to the business, managing it with such conspicuous success and public spirit that the vote of the people had accorded him the rights of a citizen, and he had willingly assumed the not inconsiderable burdens that such rights implied. He left his bank an institution with an international repute that outlasted the next generation. Happily for the preservation of his memory in our day he did not, probably could not, avoid litigation. His elder son evidently took keen delight in pleading, whether as prosecutor or defendant. Both employed skilful counsel; their opponents invoked like aid, and so a considerable number of speeches, fathered for the greater part on Demosthenes, have survived to afford us interesting glimpses of Athenian commerical life.

The first meeting with Pasion might hardly prepossess in his favor, if one were unable or unwilling to read between the lines of an opponent's invective. Among the persons who did busi

ness at Pasion's bank was a foreigner from the region of the Black Sea, the chief source of grain for Attica which had long ceased to be a self-sufficing state. This Pontine said he had left money on deposit with Pasion and brought suit to enforce repayment. According to Attic usage he had to speak in court for himself, but he could engage another to write a speech for him, and he sought counsel of Isocrates, one of the Attic Ten. Greek speech-writers seldom spared personal abuse. Appeals to the sentiments, prejudices, and passions of jurors, who might number several hundred and who decided by a majority vote, were expected, and, there is every reason to think, were often effective, though they are sometimes amusingly naïve. The case which Isocrates made for the Pontine is this:

The plaintiff's father, Sopæus, had been an officer of some authority in the Euxine principality of Satyrus. The son, a new Anarcharsis, wished to exchange the rather crude conditions of his native land for the amenities of Greek life. His father had given him two cargoes of grain and some money and had sent the young hopeful westward "for trade and observation." He had betaken himself to the Piræus where correspondents of his father, as it seems, introduced him to Pasion and he "used his bank." But presently Sopæus fell from the favor of the capricious Satyrus and the Pontine was himself accused of political intrigue. There was already in Hellendom a quite developed system of interstate representation and Satyrus sent instructions to his agents at Athens to take over the Pontine's property there and to bid him come home. Thereupon, as he tells the jurors with zest, he entered into a conspiracy with Pasion to hide his assets. With the banker he was, he tells them, "on such favorable footing, that I trusted him wholly, not only about money but in other things. As we discussed the matter," he continues, "it seemed advisable to us to surrender the obvious property" [presumably the grain], "yet not only to deny the bank deposit but even to make it appear that I owed him and others money for interest, and to do everything to make them think I had no friends." The guileful youth pretends that he supposed the banker had entered into this arrangement out of sheer kindness or love of the game, and that he was cruelly un

deceived by the sequel. For, when he had compromised with the agents of Satyrus and wished to get from Pasion the money he had just publicly sworn was not his, he says the banker at first pretended he was short of cash but, when the indignant depositor had sent some confederates to look into the matter, Pasion actually denied that any balance was due, and the depositor, still according to his own tale, had got himself so tangled in a web of deceit that he "thought it safest to keep still."

It was in the year 394 that a truly Oriental reversal of fortune loosed the Pontine's tongue and gave him courage to sue. In some way Sopæus had regained the favor of Satyrus, whose son had now married the claimant's sister. He had active political backing. So completely were the tables turned that the Pontine and a confederate had the effrontery to demand of Pasion to produce as a witness against himself a bank clerk, who, as Pasion affirmed, had conspired with them to defraud the bank and had then been helped into hiding. Pasion, his patience evidently quite exhausted, had cited the Pontine before the proper officer and made him furnish bondsmen for the embezzled funds before he set out for a trip to the Peloponnesus, then the militarily dominant part of Greece. While he was away his friend found or produced the missing clerk. Then Pasion, according to his accuser, asked a conference, and after admitting his fault urged that it be kept private in the interest of the business. The Pontine, according to himself, had no objection to leaving other depositors in the lurch if only he got his money, so they agreed to sail together to Pontus and that Pasion should pay him there, "settling the claim as far as possible from Athens so that no one here might know the terms of settlement, and he when he came back could say what he pleased.” In case of dispute Satyrus was to be umpire. A copy of this astonishing agreement was, he says, deposited with one Pyro who was told to destroy it if they agreed, otherwise to hand it to Satyrus. This document, while in Pyro's custody had, he says, been altered by Pasion into a general release of all claims on him by the Pontine who, having no pertinent evidence, naturally devotes much of his speech to abuse of the banker. But a banker could not have maintained a business at all in