other not bulky valuables on deposit for safe keeping, the owner being required to make only a nominal loan of one dollar upon them, in order to bring it into the books of the institution. It also takes on deposit, in trust, from the courts, all moneys in dispute, and the proceeds of unsettled estates, and receives one or two per cent, per annum for ensuring its safety. It is contemplated also to found a savings-bank feature of the institution, and by putting the money at interest, aid the depositors to increase their funds without risk.
There are three grand divisions; one devoted to clothing, another to miscellaneous goods, and the last and most important, to diamonds, plate, and costly jewelry. In this last named, I saw goods piled up in separate compartments in a single room, valued at two million dollars upon the books of the institution, and probably worth in the United States, at least four million dollars or five million dollars. The valuation of diamonds is at about the rate of sixty dollars per carat, for perfect stones of that weight,—say, at least thirty-three and one-third less than the value in our market; and I am told that the diamonds, pearls, rubies, and emeralds, which are sold, are largely purchased by people going to the United States and Europe who frequently realize large profits from their sale in those countries. One set, which sold that month at the public sale, for five hundred dollars, has since been sold at one thousand dollars to my knowledge, in New York, and will be sent to Europe to be sold again.
At this time, when there is an immense amount of suffering among the "middle classes," and the old families, who were once rich, but now deprived of all income with no hopeful future before them, at the same
