the amount? If the holder has been free from wrong in
presenting the check, the bank cannot look to him, but to the drawer
for repayment. If the maker of a check has no money in the bank,
perhaps he may not be a depositor, he commits a fraud in making and
giving his check to another, and the offense in many states is deemed
a crime: likewise a person who receives such a check knowing its true
nature is equally deep in the wrong.

The law is very strict in its requirement of banks when paying the
checks of customers. After a check has been delivered and has
therefore passed beyond the maker's control, the law requires the
greatest care on the part of a bank in paying it. The bank must be
especially careful in examining the signature and the amount, and if
the signature has been forged, or the amount changed, the bank is
liable for an improper payment. Once an employer gave his trusted
clerk a post-dated check, which he was to present on the day
specified, and, after drawing the money, was to pay this to his
employees. The clerk changed the date to an earlier one, drew the
money, kept it and fled. The court said the bank should have detected
the alteration. The bank contended that had the clerk waited until the
proper day, and then drawn the money, it would not have been liable.
The court said that was not the case presented, the clerk did not
wait. Banks suffer, far more than the public knows, from the payment
of raised checks, for it is quite impossible always to detect them,
yet banks are held liable therefor.

There are two rules relating to the payment of checks worth
mentioning. One is, the maker of a check should use proper precaution
in making it. He should write in a way that will not be likely to
confuse the paying official. For instance, if in the above case the
maker, intending to give a post-dated check, had written the date so
imperfectly that the teller was misled, the bank would not have been
liable for paying it, or for refusing to pay because there was not
money enough in the bank at the time of presentation for payment. Some
persons are very careless in making figures; when they are, they
cannot look to the bank for the ill consequence of their own neglect.

Again, if a bank paid forged checks, for example, which were returned
with other checks on the balancing of a depositor's book, and months,
perhaps years afterward, the depositor discovered the forgeries or
forged indorsements, he could, notwith