The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-01-06

blazoned on the door. The rooms suffice
for this great business; the first a solidly
furnished waiting room like a doctor 5
outer office where the fledgIing lord NAV
sit Tor half an hour, if business be ordin-
arily lively, and for an hour or more of it
happens TO be the day after Derby, when
losers come in battalions to raise the
whereWithal to meet the only sort of debts
IT is held disgraceful to forget Meantime
he may hear through the partition. Good
morning, my lord" and Sorry 1 can't
oblige your lordship to-day" and the
speeding of the parting guest. Finally,
after more ceremony than is required TO
penetrate the various strata of secretaries
hedging British cabinet minister. he will
be ushered into the presence. The inner
sanctum is smaller room than the outer
furnished with desk where sits the money
merchant, solitary engraving on the
wan, appropriately enough Frith's cele-
brated picture of the Derby. displaying the
sporting spendthrift in the foreground
scattering his cash, and covering the on
posite wall fat mahogany book case
which secretes the most remarkable
library in the united kingdom.
The writer once had occasion to visit
Scotland Yard. There is a superstition
that this dismal bureau of English police
secrets cannot be approached by anv en-
lssary of the press, but a letter from a
government official swung the doors in
ward, for an official autograph bears more
influence even than gold in Europe He
invaded the den of Inspector Melville ara
asked information concerning the French
anarchist, Louise Michel
Michael repeated the Inspector as a
librarian to whom the title of a book has
been mentioned. "Ah-yes-M-M."
He strolled over to a file like the letter
boxes 10 an American post office, pointed
along M i'm the horizontal row to l. in the
vertical row and picked out one from a
stack of cards
Louise Michael" he read as a merchant
would quote the price of eggs. "She is
now in Paris. Monday she will go to Bel
giun She will stop for four days at SO
Chelsea road West Dulwich and on the
18th she will sail for the United States"
All of which prophecy was fulfilled down
to the last item, and that was checkmat-
ed by the announcement from the treasury
officials that if Madame Michael voyaged
to American shores she would be prompt
ly consigned homeward.
Inspector Melville keeps a card cata-
logue of anarchists. He knows not only
what each agitator has done, but what
he intends to do. Mr. Lewis complies a
catalogue of the arstocracy ON a similar
plan, but so comprehensive that beside it
the catalogue of the congressional library
lated how Won Moltke had drafted and
filed a plan of campaign for every posi-
bic conflict which might befall Germany,
and how when the message came that
Napoleon III had declared war he merely
said to his secretary, Bring the third
portfolio on the second right-hand shelf"
When one of the rising generation of
Nevills calls Sam Lewis directs clerk to
bring the Neville ledger. Therein he finds
detailed statistics of the Nevill fortune,
the funds and prospects of each member
of the family, the estates with their in
eVitable membranes, the manner of liv-
ing of each Nevil, his virtues, his habits
as to paying debts, the names and stand
ing of his intimates and their dispositions
in the way of extending help to a friend
in need. The biography has been in pre-
paratjon for years on the certainty that it's
subject would some day appear just as
every well-regulated newspaper office
keeps sketches of Gladstone, Bismarck
and the pope awaiting the inevitable bull
letin of their death. Personally Lewis
does not often require to study his library
because he carries the details in his head,
but they are a chart and compass for the
guidance of clerks when he may be abb
sent, telling them infallibly whether to
lend an applicant money and to what linn
it, and what securities to require and
what interest, whether 10, so or 100 per
cent. Thus the business is reduced to a
science as exact as the law, and based on
the same principles as the writing of in
surance policies, where a small premium is
charged on the new modern fire-proof
building which advances through the
grades of property to the rotten wooden
hulk wherein no risks are ventured.
Sam Lewis can play his part with the
grand air as well as his customers. One
summer night he was seated at a table at
the green cloth al Monte Carlo, when a
titled Briton whose argosies had gone
ashore there came stalking UP with a re-
quest for loan, as he would have ordered
drinks
Sir" replied Lewis, crushingly "I do
business at II Cork street, and my clerks
when l am absent
He is no common money lender of the
kidney of those who enmeshed the son of
an American minister TO England and in
return for f20 and box of cigars extorted
a note for fifty, which, by repeated re-
newals, was raised into the hundreds. Nor
does he drag his clients into court, for the
suit against young Clay was his first in
thirty years of business, though the fear
OF such exposure on the part of the Gus
toners and the ironclad securities which
Lewis, on his part, insists upon work to-
gether to this end.
Lewis asserts: II would not have sued
young Clay, but he went about calling me
a swindler and saying that the whole af-
fair was a job put up on me. l had my
reputation to defend. If he had come to
me and said he could not pay me l would
have torn up the notes and told him that
he owed nothing"
credible An American, one of the most
telling how Sam Lewis came to him at
conspicuous on the stage, never tires of
That he would have done so is not in
Monte Carlo. when the bank had swal-
lowed his last dollar. and he was on the
frontiers of ruin, and stuffed his hands
full of bank notes, saying: 60 away from
here and stay away. This game is too
fast for you. Pay me when you cam and
never mind the interest"
The noble society that cheats its guests
at baccarat and procures money from its
friends for it's little luXuries by fraud
sneers at such as Sam Lewis, calling them
Shylocks. At least it may be written down
in the credit column of his page that he
does not always insist upon the choicest
cut from the joint when he comes to his
pound Of flesh.