The Embankment

“ Some business had detained me in Chancery Lane until nine in the evening, and thereafter, having some inkling of a headache, I was disinclined either for entertainment or further work. So much of the sky as the high cliffs of that narrow canon of traffic left visible spoke of a serene night, and I determined to make my way down to the Embankment, and rest my eyes and cool my head by watching the variegated lights upon the river. Beyond comparison the night is the best time for this place ”

“ Whilst it is not disputable that the findings show a percolation through the embankment, I can discover nothing in them supporting the conclusion that the obstructions placed by the government in the bed of the river below the point where the plantation is situated have caused the water in the river to go over the embankment at the plantation and flood the land. ”

“ The prehistoric monuments existing in and round London are two in number: they are the river embankment and the Hampstead barrow. The date of the embankment cannot be guessed: there is nothing at all to mark the time of its construction. For trade purposes an embankment must have been made as soon as trade in London began to develop. We shall see presently what happened on the north bank. But it was not enough to improve the river at London Port: it was necessary to reclaim the marsh-land all along the river north and south. ”

“ As the streets that lead from the Strand to the Embankment are very narrow, it is better not to walk down them arm-in-arm. ”

“ For we are not only impotent to restore, but strong to defile, the work of past ages. Of the impotence, take but this one, utterly humiliatory, and, in the full meaning of it, ghastly, example. We have lately been busy embanking, in the capital of the country, the river which, of all its waters, the imagination of our ancestors had made most sacred, and the bounty of nature most useful. Of all architectural features of the metropolis, that embankment will be, in future, the most conspicuous ”

“ Upon the bank are some timidly adventuring their hesitating feet before they plunge into the element; some bind their hair, preparing; others, having bathed, unbind, and the long tresses stream over the fair shoulders: blithely thus they pass the time, and defy the hot old sun upon the river’s bank. ”

“ How much thunder and buffet we permit outside our seawall of self-interest against any rock or sand-bank that stands unenclosed! but we only suffer the water of self-reproach to sweep with a shallow swash and soothing murmur the outside of the bank we have cast up. ”

“ I. My father sent me to old Rutgers, And resolv'd that I should be a man; And so I settled down, In that noisy college town, On the banks of the old Raritan. (Chorus) On the banks of the old Raritan, my boys, where old Rutgers ever more shall stand, For has she not stood since the time of the flood, On the banks of the old Raritan. II. As Fresh, they used me rather roughly, But I the fearful gauntlet ran, And they shook me so about That they turned me inside out, On the banks of the old Raritan. ”

“ It was very seldom that this wallet of the judge's contained so large a sum of money as on that night, for salt was dear in the wilderness. It required eight hundred gallons of the weak salt water and many cords of fire-wood, and the work of many men for many days, to make a single bushel of the precious article. It was still scarce and hard to get thereabouts at five dollars a bushel, so that a large sum was needed to pay for an entire cargo. Drops of perspiration stood on the judge's forehead as he counted out the bank-notes, the gold, and the cut money. ”

“ At two thirds of the distance from the right bank he will see a stream large enough to be called a river, of no great depth, but of great force and violence. Immediately beyond the left bank he will see a fertile country resembling that he has just past, and uniting with it but for the expanse of white stones. ”

“ And if the City, as a whole, is romantic, its banks are doubly and trebly romantic. Nothing is more marvellous than the rapid growth of our banking system, which is twice as great now as it was twenty years ago—and it was great enough then. ”

“ People there are accustomed to going up and down. Bankruptcy, even, does not mean the end of the world in these regions. But a banker in a country town, who has all the money of a district in his hands, should not get into this reckless way. His clients are pleased—up to a certain limit. But when once the first whisper of suspicion has been roused it flies fast, and the panic with which rural depositors rush upon a bank which has awakened the ghost of an apprehension, is even more cruel and unreflecting than other panics. ”

“ Next to the skeleton sat a mere son of earth,—a hunter of the Exchange,—a gatherer of shining dust,—a man whose life’s record was in his ledger, and whose soul’s prison-house the vaults of the bank where he kept his deposits. ”

“ As we rode over the heart of the City—that sanctum of capital, where the Bank of England, many other banks of scarcely less brilliant fame, the Royal Exchange, Stock Exchange, with credit companies, insurance offices, and discount houses innumerable lie herded—the bombs fell in a tempest, shattering fabric after fabric, and uprooting their very foundations. ”

“ Finance, like Time, devours its own children. If the banker is to perpetuate himself, he must found a noble house, a dynasty; like the Fuggers of Antwerp, that lent money to Charles V. and were created Princes of Babenhausen, a family that exists at this day—in the Almanach de Gotha. The instinct of self-preservation, working it may be unconsciously, leads the banker to seek a title. ”

“ In no other wise can one realize how the sterile soil and the bleak winds and the short summer have been the rugged parents of that thrift, that industry, that economy, that regard for the small savings, which have made New England the banker of America. As the population grew beyond the capacity of the soil, her sons from her myriad harbors swarmed out upon the sea, an army of occupation, and annexed the Grand Banks, making them national banks before the days of Secretary Chase. ”

“ We unstrapped our knapsacks, and sat down upon the grass, and basked in the sun a while. Then we essayed to cross the stepping-stones with the knapsacks in our hands; but, finding this something of an undertaking, we pitched them gently on the opposite bank.
But that bank was sloping, covered with short smooth grass, and treacherous, so that both those knapsacks rolled back, and plunged into the water and sank, sending up a succession of air-bubbles.
I am a truthful historian (between these two covers, at any rate) , and write nothing but the truth ”

“ Now that the New York banks have come forward to redeem their obligations, and have shown that sensibility to their own honor, and that regard for the punctual performance of their promises, which once formed the pride and glory of the merchant's and the banker's character, I feel the deepest anxiety for their success in the great contest which is to ensue. ”

“ We have stopped at one, now; men and boys are looking down on us from a sand-bank far above our heads. Why the people chose a sand-bank, when they might have had a delightful situation almost anywhere, I wonder much! ”

“ But I figured there had to be ONE man in town independent enough to sass the banker!" ”

“ This time it had been Banks—Banks, the impossible—who had swayed his destiny, and lacking all other attributes, Banks had accomplished it through the simple power of the human touch. In the hour of his need it had been neither religion nor philosophy, but the outstretched hand, that had helped. Then his vision broadened and he saw that though the body of love is one, the members of it are infinite; and it was made plain to him at last, that the love of Emily, the love of Alice, and the love of Banks, were but different revelations of the same immortality. ”

“ Along these banks, forgotten tepee-poles, deserted fish-stage, and lonely grave remain, a crumbling commentary of yesterday, a hint of recurring to-morrows. Son succeeds father, race replaces race, but the great Mackenzie flows on, and, as it flows, unwritten history along these banks is ever in the making. Tragedy and triumph, self-aggrandisement and self-obliteration, are here as well as in the noisy world we have left. ”

“ I was standing upon the bank of the river; and. apparently, the only other human beings in the world were my interlocutors, who were even then just disappearing from my horizon down the steep bank toward the river's dry bed. ”

“ For Banks, too, gave me the impression of having a soul that came something nearer the surface of life than is common in average humanity—a look of vitality, zest, ardour—I fumbled for a more significant superlative as I returned his stare. And yet behind that ardour there was, in Arthur Banks, at least, a hint of determination and shrewdness that I felt must be inherited from the sound yeoman stock of his father. ”

“ Now praising banks as unfailing fountains of money, now denouncing banks as the sources of poisoned waters, clamoring for whatever promised even momentary relief, striking at whatever seemingly denied it, the people laid upon anything and anybody but themselves and their improvidence, the responsibility for their distress. ”

“ The whir and throb of their pursuers already seemed to come from every point of the compass—from below, from either side and, what was more alarming, from above; but banking sharply to the right he thrashed his course at topmost speed, praying that the cloud-bank might not cease. ”

“ The high banks formed by the action of the stream in cutting through the rich soil vary from the right side to the left, according to the course of the stream—the corresponding bank on the opposite side being generally of a slope, more or less abrupt, as the bank is high. ”

“ Thus bankers, o'er their bills and bags, Sit squeezing images of wax. Conceive the whole enchantment broke; The witches left in open air, With power no more than other folk, Exposed with all their magic ware. So powerful are a banker's bills, Where creditors demand their due; They break up counters, doors, and tills, And leave the empty chests in view. ”

“ We do business on a mighty small spiritual bank-balance. To carry no reserve is like firing a boiler in which the gauges show no water. In fact, it means a very great danger of an explosion—and the grave necessity of being sent to the hospital and having the stub-end of your self-respect removed. ”

“ Day by day as he sees the sun-loved banks blushing greener, he ventures further forth to visit neighbors or watch his clover, or dig a new home in a more favored bank, or fortify himself in some rocky stronghold where boys and dogs may not enter. ”

“ At that moment a great noise arose on the right bank, caused by the clamour of a number of petty chiefs, who in their turn had ordered their blacksmiths to cross the arm of the river between us and the bank, and to come to greet us on their behalf. ”

“ The spirit of expansion and speculation was not confined to the deposit banks, but pervaded the whole multitude of banks throughout the Union, and was giving rise to new institutions to aggravate the evil. ”

“ I could calmly say I would charge the bonds to the loss column, but to divide money, that had been obtained through the looting of a bank vault, with officers of the law, sworn to protect the lives and property of the people, seemed to me to be too base a proposition for consideration. ”

“ These tailors and the landlord and he all scraped the money together among them, and put all their savings into this bank that they are starting. What is a bank for those that begin in these days? Simply a license to ruin themselves. A banker's wife may lie down at night a millionaire and wake up in the morning with nothing but her settlement. At first word, at the very first sight of him, we made up our minds about this gentleman—he is not one of us. You can tell by his gloves, by his waistcoat, that he is a working man, the son of a man that kept a pot-house somewhere in Germany ”

“ It is idle to say that such persons may obtain relief through a banker: the very application shows a state of dependence into which the holder of real money ought never to be reduced: for he who produces the thing signified ought not to be under the control or caprice of him who merely deals in its sign. Moreover, the banker himself may be unable to give any accommodation: gold and silver may have left the country; even the Bank of England may be so crippled as to have borrowed some millions of the precious metals from France: we may be within twenty-four hours of barter. ”

“ A speculation, the week before I left England, brought me a profit of a million marks. But for the banking interests of my country and the feeling that I am the trustee for thousands of other people, it would weary me to look for investments. And you—you came in to-night, looking worn out just because you had lost a handful or so of those wretched plaques. There, you see it is coming now. I should like permission to do more than call myself your friend. I should like permission to be also your banker. ”

“ If the Banks be ruined because they are asked to fulfil their engagements, then ruin would be an act of justice which could not take place too soon, with a view to diminish the greater loss which at a later period society would have to support. ”

“ A sharp warning cry from a workman heralded the crumbling fall of a great section of the bank overhanging the drill which Graves had idly watched, and, as idly, watched still. A dreamer of habit, his will failed immediately to rally to the naked fact and its demands. ”

“ Great sacrifices: no reserve: creditors take everything; dividend fourpence in the pound, furniture of house and bank, Mrs. Hardie's portrait, and down to the coalscuttle. Bankrupt saves nothing but his honour, and—the six thousand pounds or so he has stitched into his old great-coat: hands his new one to the official assignees, like an honest man. ”