LATEST TELEGRAPH STORY.

Evening Star, Issue 3297, 13 September 1873, Page 3

LATEST TELEGRAPH STORY.

The most curious fact, taken altogether, that we have heard of the electric telegraph was told by the cashier of the Bank of England. One Saturday night the folks at the Bank could not make the balance come right by LIOO This was a serious matter in that little establishment; not the cash, of course, but the mistake iu the arithmetic, for it occasions a world of scrutiny. An error in balancing has been known to keep a whole delegation of clerks from each office at work sometimes through the whole niyht. A hue and cry was of course made for this LIOO, as if the old lady of Threadneedle street would be bankrupt without it. Luckily on Sunday morning, a clerk felt a suspicion of the truth dart through his mind quicker than any flash of the telegraph itself. He told the chief cashier on Monday morning that perhaps the mistake might have occurred in packing some boxes of specie for the West Indies, which had been sent to Southampton for shipment. The suggestion was immediately acted upon. Here was a race, lightning against stream, with eight-and-forty hours start given. Instantly the wires asked “whether such a vessel had left the harbor.” “ Just weighing anchor” was the answer. “Stop her!” frantically shouted the electric telegraph. It was done. “ Have up on deck certain boxes marked so ; weigh them carefully.” they were weighed, and one—the delinquent —was found to be just one packet of a hundred sovereigns heavier than it ought to be. “ Let her go,” said the mysterious telegraph. The West India folks were debited with LIOO, and the error was corrected without ever looking into the boxes, or delaying the voyage an hour. Now that was doing business.