wear, at the one shop. We have ten depôts
besides this grand central store which figures in
our almanack. At each of these stores a child
can buy the "general" groceries for the household,
sure of getting the best articles and full
weight. Where she buys the groceries she can
procure all kinds of butcher's meat. We
purchase our own fat cattle and prime wether
mutton now, sir. We pioneers are rather proud
when we see a drove of sleek-skinned, bright-eyed
fat bullocks driven down the street, and
know they will give juicy joints and rich soup to
our wives and children. We make contracts, too,
with breeders in the country, who send us up the
carcases by rail. Our experience is not only
that we get the best meat at a reasonable price,
but more of it, somehow, to the pound weight.
The lump of tallow never sticks at the bottom
of the purchaser's scale in equitable shops, and
our beams are of the same length on either side of
the tongue. It would do your heart good on a
Friday evening to see poor people, not
members, making their little purchases. They know
they won't be cheated, and that what they get,
little or much, is good.

No; we don't sell drapery at all the stores. A
gown or shawl, sir, is a matter requiring some
consideration and due forethought. Our wives
can afford a little walk for such a serious matter
as the purchase of a bonnet or a cloak. We have
four depôts for "drapery," and what a world of
articles is included under that name! The
wives like to bring their husbands with them to
these depôts. Women, you know, sir, fancy a
man's taste in the matter of dress; and if they
do consult our taste, sir, we must be a little
generous. A single store, but it is a large one,
supplies the wants of the pioneers in tailoring;
but we have three depôts for the sale of boots
and shoes and noisy, but serviceable, clogs.
At all the stores orders for coal are received,
and the housewife gets the best Gilcreux or
Whitehaven laid down comfortably in her coal-bunk
without trouble. We like the half-holiday
movement, too, and we close all our houses of
business on Tuesdays at two o'clock. That
breaks the week.

I said we were "pioneers," and that a multitude
of co-operatives followed in our wake.
Just glance at this return from the Rochdale
Co-operative Corn-Mill Society. The members
possess a capital of eighty-nine thousand pounds,
and they did a trade, last year, of three hundred
and fifty-six thousand four hundred and forty
pounds. They have not totted up their profit
and loss account for '67; but they made eighteen
thousand one hundred and sixty-three pounds
in 1866, on a cash business of two hundred and
twenty-four thousand one hundred and twenty-two
pounds. They deliver, every week, one
thousand four hundred and eighty sacks of
unadulterated flour, one hundred and twenty-eight
loads of oatmeal, and eight hundred and ninety-two
loads of malt and other goods. The members
are now laying out ten thousand pounds
in erecting malt-kilns; for the artisan requires
good sound beer or ale, and there will be no
coculus Indicus in a co-operative store.

No; we co-operatives are not altogether
free from losses. We must expect now and
then to meet with a rub, and we have suffered
somewhat heavily in the matter of cotton. You
see, the American civil war upset the cotton
trade for a while altogether; and when the war
ended, and cotton came from a hundred different
sources, we met a loss amongst the rest by a
sudden fall in the raw material. They say that
cotton-brokers rigged the market; but I don't
pretend to know the rights of it. We are working
this co-operative manufacturing society at a
profit now; but we lost thirteen thousand and
thirty-four pounds in the last three years. We
comfort ourselves with the thought that we
cleared twenty-six thousand four hundred and
sixty-one pounds since 1857; so the general
balance of profit and loss is in our favour to the
amount of thirteen thousand four hundred
pounds, and we are doing a business of one
hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year on a
capital of one hundred and eighteen thousand
nine hundred and ninety pounds.

We have, moreover, a co-operative building
society, paying five per cent; and a provident sick
and burial society, which has not incurred the
animadversion of Mr. Tidd Pratt. We have, too,
a wholesale society, for the supply of co-operative
stores, with a capital of twenty-four thousand
two hundred and eight pounds, doing a business
of two hundred and fifty-five thousand seven
hundred and seventy-nine pounds; but, being a
wholesale concern, managed by a few, we are
satisfied with a profit of only three thousand
four hundred and fifty-two pounds yearly. A
merchant, with the same amount of capital,
would be content with a similar proportion of
gain. Then there is a co-operative insurance
company, just commencing to work; and as our
means increase there is no knowing what
business we may yet undertake: only we are all
determined to proceed with care and caution,
and not to risk what we have already won by
rash speculation.

I think our almanack, single sheet as it is,
gives us twenty-eight some reason to feel proud
in being equitable pioneers.

GEORGE SILVERMAN'S
EXPLANATION.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.
IN NINE CHAPTERS. SEVENTH CHAPTER.

MY timidity and my obscurity occasioned
me to live a secluded life at College, and to be
little known. No relative ever came to visit
me, for I had no relative. No intimate friends
broke in upon my studies, for I made no
intimate friends. I supported myself on my
scholarship, and read much. My College time
was otherwise not so very different from my
time at Hoghton Towers.

Knowing myself to be unfit for the noisier
stir of social existence, but believing myself
qualified to do my duty in a moderate though
earnest way if I could obtain some small
preferment in the Church, I applied my mind to