BOOK-KEEPING BY DOUBLE ENTRY.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 849, 12 August 1871, Page 3

BOOK-KEEPING BY DOUBLE ENTRY.

There is nothing more puzzling to ordinary minds than "book-keeping by double entry," and it is advisable that no one should ever attempt to keep his accounts on this system unless he fully understands it. A ■well-meaning public accountant in India has, it appears, lately come to trouble owing to misunderstanding the nature of this simple process. A certain gentleman, says a Lahore paper, was recently appointed to a station not a thousand miles from the capital of the Punjaub. After a short time he submitted his accounts according to rule to the head office. The various bills of receipts and expenditure were being rapidly passed, when a clerk of unnatural brilliance pounced on a bill in which 20,000 bricks were charged for twice over. The question was at once sent to the gentleman whether he had got altogether forty thousand bricks on such a date, and, if so, why he had divided the article into two ? " Oh, dear no," he said, " I only got twenty thousand bricks, but you told me to put everything down by " double entry," so I put the bricks down twice. All the other charges are the same.'* To the horror of the whole department it was found only too true. The receipt side was then examined, but it was consoling to find that with an instinctive acumen worthy of a higher appointment, the gentleman had here limited himself to " single entry."

The proprietor of an hotel was bustling about one morning,. with about twenty things to do, when some one asked him why he did not call upon his waiter. " I shan't call him as long as I can help it," replied ho, " for when ho is in bed I know where he is, but after ho is up I don't know where to find him."

Emigration societies to supply wives to the young men in the far West are to bo formed in some of the New England States.