importance, and it did not tend to increase either its reputation or
popularity when it issued a notice to the effect that in future no
exchange brokers need trouble to call as it had appointed its own
individual broker (Mr. Chapman) to do all the work. The bank continued
to carry on in this manner for a number of years until one day it was
announced that it was going into liquidation, for what reason no one
ever seemed to know. I believe the liquidation proved eminently
satisfactory and the shareholder reaped a handsome return on their
holdings, but it seemed a thousand pities that, after the bank had so
successfully ridden out the awful financial storm of 1886, when banks
and institutions of all sorts and conditions, and of much higher
standing and position, went clashing down by the dozen like so many
nine-pins, the management without any apparent reason should close
down for ever one of the oldest banking institutions of the city.


THE HONGKONG BANK.

The site on which these premises stand, as well as those to the east
as far as Vansittart Row and the new block at the corner now in course
of building, was for very many years in the occupation of Mackenzie
Lyall & Co. as an auction mart. 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.