The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

When deposit-books are lost or destroyed, some explanation is usually forthcoming as to how the circumstance occurred, and some of these statements are of a very curious kind. Thus a person employed in a travelling circus accounted for the loss of his book in these terms: "Last night, when I was sleeping in the tent, one of our elephants broke loose and tore up my coat, in the pocket of which was my bank-book, and eat part of it. I enclose the fragments." In another case the statement furnished was: "I think the children has taken it out of doors and lost it, as they are in the habbit of playing shutal cock with the backs of books." Another depositor said that his book was "supposed to have been taken from the house by our tame monkey." While in a further case the explanation vouchsafed was as follows: "I was in a yard feeding my pigs. I took off my coat and left it down on a barrell; while engaged doing so, a goat in the yard pulled it down. The book falling out, the goat was chewing it when I caught her." A sergeant in the army lost his book "whilst in the act of measuring a recruit for the army,"--a circumstance which is, perhaps, not creditable to the recruit. A needy depositor pledged his coat, forgetting, however, to withdraw his deposit-book, which was in one of the pockets.