over to the
agents and explain matters, and at the same time authorised me to
offer to pay anything they might see fit to impose in the nature of a
fine. I got very little satisfaction or comfort from my interview
with the head of the firm, a Mr. William Anderson whose soubriquet was
Gorgeous Bill, who told me that he could do nothing personally, that
the matter would have to be submitted to the directors at their next
weekly meeting, and that the probabilities were that they would
enforce the rule and cancel the policy. The following few days were a
veritable nightmare to me, as I fully expected they would act as he
intimated they would and as they were fully entitled to do. At last
the fatal day arrived, and I waited in fear and trembling outside the
Board room, whilst the directors deliberated over the affair. To my
intense joy and relief they announced their decision which was to the
effect that they had taken into consideration all the facts of the
matter and they thought a fine would meet the exigencies of the case,
but I must not do it again. As far as I remember the amount was Rs.
150, but the point of the story has yet to be told. Whilst all this
was happening the man was lying dead at home having been accidentally
killed by a bale of cotton falling upon him when passing along some
cotton warehouses in one of the streets in Liverpool.

[Illustration: Old view of Bank of Bengal _Johnston & Hoffmann_]

[Illustration: _Photo. by Bourne & Shepherd_ Present view of Bank of
Bengal]

PART II.

Topographical.

Of all the vast and dramatic changes that have taken place in Calcutta
since I first saw it, I think the most striking and outstanding are to
be seen in Clive Street and its environs. Looking back and contrasting
the past with the present, it all seems so startling and wonderful as
to suggest the idea that some genii or magician had descended upon the
city and with a touch of his magic wand converted a very ordinary
looking street, containing many mean, dilapidated looking dwellings,
into a veritable avenue of palaces, and for ever sweeping away blots
and eyesores which had existed almost from time immemorial. This
transformation more or less applies to Clive Row, the whole of the
south side of Clive Ghaut Street stretching round the corner into the
south of the Strand, part of the northern portion, Royal Exchange
Place, Fairlie Place, the west and south side of Dalhousie Square, and
a goodly po