ince it is one by which nobody concerned can possibly profit;
but its fine, sportsmanlike character endeared it to our grandparents.

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.

By this time Masterman was in his seventy-third year; he had long
complained of the effects of age, had long since retired from business,
and now lived in absolute seclusion under the roof of his son Michael,
the well-known solicitor. Joseph, on the other hand, was still up and
about, and still presented but a semi-venerable figure on the streets
in which he loved to wander. This was the more to be deplored because
Masterman had led (even to the least particular) a model British life.
Industry, regularity, respectability, and a preference for the four per
cents are understood to be the very foundations of a green old age. All
these Masterman ha