tionaries under the verb to act. We possess nearly fifty words which thus modify action, as enact, re-enact, actuate, &c. How far the references should be extended, is a question for the exercise of judgment.

Under the word digestion, I should like arranged its kindred words, peptic, eupeptic, dyspeptic, &c.

Under the word death,—euthanasia, posthumous, demise, defunct, &c.

Under the word day,-ephemeral, diurnal, triduan, diary, &c.

Under the word murder,-patricide, sororicide, deicide, infanticide, tyrannicide, &c.

Under transparent,-opaque, pellucid, translucent, &c. Under visible,-sapid, tangible, audible, odorous, &c. Under shoe, calceated, discalceated, &c.

Under snatch, ereption, arreptitious, &c.

Under geography, chorography, hydrography, topography, cosmography, &c.

Under opticks, dioptricks, catoptricks, &c.

Under chain,-interchain, unchain, catenarian, catenate, &c.

Under carnivorous,-granivorous, piscivorous, graminivorous, &c.

In short, I desire a complete index to our language, so that a person who refers to any word may see all the words with which it is connected in signification;-may see also how the word can be expressed substantively, adjectively, verbially, and adverbially; and may see its synonyms, its correlatives, its negatives, and affirmatives. This is no visionary suggestion, nor does it involve great labor or learning. I have proceeded far in the construction of such a dictionary without its having occupied more than the evenings of six months. I procured two blank

folio books. Each is the size of a volume of newspapers. On the outer edge of every second page, the book-binder pasted a column, cut from an English dictionary. Having a whole dictionary thus formed of single columns, with a blank margin of almost two folio pages to every column, I took another dictionary, and with a scissors cut out, for instance, the word abacus, with its definition. This word purports to be a counting-table. I pasted it in my dictionary against the verb to count. But abacus is also "the uppermost member of a column." I, therefore, cut another abacus, with its definition, from a supplemental dictionary, and pasted it into mine, against the word column.

After a little familiarity with the labor, and with the assistance of my children, to whom it was a pleasant and instructive amusement, I could generally cut out two hundred words of an evening, and place them appropriately in my dictionary. I was soon surprised at the numerous relations, connexions, and dependencies which words bear to each other, and at the number of useful words of whose existence I had been ignorant. On looking, for instance, at the word colour, I had collated aside of it thirty-eight words:―lutarious, the colour of mud; citrine, the colour of lemon; philomot, the colour of a dry leaf; festucine, the colour of straw, &c. In Johnson's definitions of familiar words, constant evidences occur of a desire to reveal unusual words. So little, however, is this beneficial design appreciated, that a recent newspaper adduces, for ridicule, Johnson's definition of net-work. The definition says, that net-work is, "anything reticulated or decussated." The news-writer may have been indebted to the definition for a knowledge that our language contains the words whose use he ridicules; and for such information alone they were doubtless used by Johnson. A knowledge of

these words is important, for we cannot express either net-work or net, adjectively, but by reticulated, or a modification of that word; nor does Johnson's Dictionary, or Walker's, or Sheridan's, contain a word that will express net, verbially, but by a modification of decussated.

The dictionary which I attempted to compile was not the suggestion of knowledge, but of ignorance, In striving after conciseness in my occasional compositions, I had often found that a phrase could be expressed by a single word; but when I desired to express a phrase, how was I to know whether or not our language contained any equiv alent word? To acquire an English dicitonary by rote would not insure my object, for I might not recollect the precise word at the moment its use became necessary. For my own information, therefore, I wished to collate the contents of a dictionary. The production is not intended for the public, hence I confined the collocation to words that are useful to my own degree of knowledge; but I publish the plan I pursued, hoping that it may gain the attention of persons who possess leisure to execute it fully, and skill to improve it. An unacquaintance with our own. language is a penalty which every man suffers for an unacquaintance with Greek and Latin, to say nothing of the disadvantage of an unacquaintance with modern foreign languages; but this penalty will be removed by such a dictionary as I have sketched. And, though, I have spoken of a dictionary only, the different classes of words may easily constitute one or more useful school-books, and to such a use also, I hope they will, in time, be applied.

BANKING. THE DUTIES OF A BANKER, AND HIS PERSONAL REQUISITES THEREFOR.*

PART I.

THE BANK-OF DISCOUNT OR INTEREST.

BANKING Consists, principally, in lending money at the legal rate of interest, and sometimes, under. The loans are called discounts, because the interest is paid in advance, and deducted from the amount of the note. But if a bank were to deduct seven dollars from a hundred-dollar note, payable a year after date, the bank would receive seven dollars for a loan of only ninety-three dollars. To avoid such a result, which is, probably, an excess beyond the legal rate of seven per cent. interest, the bank pays ninetythree dollars and forty-six cents for the note, because that sum, if placed on interest for a year, will become a hundred dollars, just the amount of the note. Formerly all the banks of our State would have deducted seven dollars from the note, and such a mode of computation has been adjudged in England to be legal, and has been twice thus adjudged by our Supreme Court. But several years ago, in a case before the Court of Errors, the then Chancellor stated, incidentally, that he deemed such a computation usurious. Since then all the banks in the State, except some, or all, in the City of New York, have, from timidity or caution, adopted the modified calculation, as above exemplified, even when calculating interest on notes that are

This summary of banking was first published in 1849. A man who learns what will facilitate the procurement of bank loans will often be able to shape his business to the required standard, and be thus aided; loans not being dispensed capriciously or gratuitously, as some persons suppose.

to mature in two or three months. If, however, the original mode of calculating is defensible at law (some eminent lawyers insist it is defensible), the legality ought to be established by adjudication or legislation, for the benefit of the banks who refrain from that mode of computing discount, and for the safety of such as hazard the computation.*

DIFFERENCE AMONG BANKS AS TO THE ALLOWABLE RATE OF DISCOUNT.

The safety-fund banks of our State are restricted, in the computation of interest, to six per cent. the year on notes and drafts that become payable in sixty days or less from the time of the discount; but what are termed free banks are permitted to take seven per cent. In the early periods of banking, when banks were located in only large commercial cities, nearly all loans were of the above short description; and as no mode of computing six per cent. discount will make the interest exceed the legal rate of seven per cent., banks took the whole of such discount in advance; hence, probably, arose the practice of deducting in advance the seven per cent. also, on loans that exceeded sixty days in duration; the question of usury being either unthought of or deemed inapplicable to such transactions. So, probably, originated the practice of computing sixty days as the sixth part of a year in all calculations of bank discounts. The computation resulted in no usury while applied to six per cent. loans, but subsequently, when, from habit or inadvertence, sixty days were called by banks the sixth part of a year, in seven per cent. calculations, and ninety days were called the fourth part of a year, all the banks of the State, about twenty-five years ago, suddenly

Our Court of Appeals has recently decided that interest may be taken in advance on paper which has four months to run before maturity.