When Joseph Finsbury and his brother Masterman were little lads

in white-frilled trousers, their father--a well-to-do merchant

in Cheapside--caused them to join a small but rich tontine of

seven-and-thirty lives. A thousand pounds was the entrance fee; and

Joseph Finsbury can remember to this day the visit to the lawyer's,

where the members of the tontine--all children like himself--were

assembled together, and sat in turn in the big office chair, and signed

their names with the assistance of a kind old gentleman in spectacles

and Wellington boots. He remembers playing with the children afterwards

on the lawn at the back of the lawyer's house, and a battle-royal that

he had with a brother tontiner who had kicked his shins. The sound of

war called forth the lawyer from where he was dispensing cake and

wine to the assembled parents in the office, and the combatants were

separated, and Joseph's spirit (for he was the smaller of the two)

commended by the gentleman in the Wellington boots, who vowed he had

been just such another at the same age. Joseph wondered to himself if

he had worn at that time little Wellingtons and a little bald head,

and when, in bed at night, he grew tired of telling himself stories

of sea-fights, he used to dress himself up as the old gentleman, and

entertain other little boys and girls with cake and wine.

In the year 1840 the thirty-seven were all alive; in 1850 their number

had decreased by six; in 1856 and 1857 business was more lively, for the

Crimea and the Mutiny carried off no less than nine. There remained

in 1870 but five of the original members, and at the date of my story,

including the two Finsburys, but three.

The Wrong Box