rt. It was an old-fashioned place of two
storeys having rather a dilapidated appearance, and the top floor
consisted of a series of rambling, ramshackle rooms, one leading into
the other, extending away back to the old office of the Alliance Bank
of Simla in Council House Street. These were at one time the
residential quarters of one of the partners of the firm, and adjoining
on the north stood the Exchange Gazette Printing Press. That portion
on the western side was once, I believe, the assembly rooms of
Calcutta, where dances and other social functions used to take place.

[Illustration: _Photo by J. & H._ 12, Dalhousie Square, East, showing
West End Watch Co.'s premises]

[Illustration: _Photo by Johnston & Hoffmann._ Smith, Stanistreet &
Co's premises, Dalhousie Square, East.]

Later in the sixties, I recollect, it was for a time utlised amongst
other things as investment rooms where some of the ladies of Calcutta
congregated about noon and met their gentlemen friends engaged in
business in the city. It was also the room in which the Government
held the public sales of opium of which Mackenzie Lyall & Co. had at
one time the sole monopoly. There is a story told, and a perfectly
true one, to the effect that one chest of opium was once bid up to the
enormous sum of Rs. 1,30,955. The circumstances that brought this
about originated in the China steamer being overdue and hourly
expected; consequently the buyers were in total ignorance of the state
of the market on the other side, so in order to prolong the sale as
far as possible they went on bidding against each other until they ran
the price up to the figure above mentioned, which, however, never
materialized. Mackenzie Lyall & Co. continued to occupy the place
until the year 1888 when they removed to their present building in
Lyons Range, from which they contemplate a further change in the early
part of next year to premises now in course of erection at Mission
Row.

THE UNITED SERVICE CLUB

Was formerly styled the Bengal Military Club, the members of which
were limited to the I.C.S. and military services. As time, however,
moved on and things changed they found that this particular form of
exclusiveness was rather an expensive luxury, and very wisely threw
open wide the heavenly portals and admitted within their celestial and
sacred precincts members of other government services, save and except
those of the Bengal pilots. Why the club ever made this invidio