"Successful New Hampshire Men," "Manchester Directory," and other works. Within a few years a book bindery has been added to the establishment.

Mr. Clarke still devotes himself closely to his business six hours each day, but limits himself to this period, having been warned by an enforced rest and voyage to Europe in 1872 to recover from the strain of overwork, that even his magnificent physique could not sustain too great a burden, and he now maintains robust and vigorous health by a systematic and regular mode of life, by long rides of fifteen to twenty-five miles daily, and an annual summer vacation.

In making the MIRROR its owner has made a great deal of money. If he had saved it as some others have done, he would have more to-day than any other in Manchester who has done business the same length of time on the same capital. But if he has gathered like a man born to be a millionaire, he has scattered like one who would spend a millionaire's fortune. He has been a good liver and a free giver. All his tastes incline him to large expenditures. His home abounds in all the comforts that money will buy. His farm is a place where costly experiments are tried. He is passionately fond of fine horses, and his stables are always full of those

that are highly bred, fleet, and valuable. He loves an intelligent dog, and a good gun, and is known far and near as an enthusiastic sportsman.

He believes in being good to himself and generous to others; values money only for what it will buy, and every day illustrates the fact that it is easier for him to earn ten dollars than to save one by being "close."

A business that will enable a man of such tastes and impulses to gratify all his wants and still accumulate a competency for his children is a good one, and that is what the business of the MIRROR counting-room has done.

Nor is this all, nor the most, for the MIRROR has made the name of John B. Clarke a household word in nearly every school district in Northern New England and in thousands of families in other sections. It has given him a great influence in the politics, the agriculture, and the social life of his time, has made him a power in shaping the policy of his city and state, and one of the forces that have kept the wheels of progress moving in both for more than thirty years.

In a word, what one man can do for and with a newspaper in New Hampshire John B. Clarke has done for and with the MIRROR, and what a great newspaper can do for a man the MIRROR has done for John B. Clarke.

THROUGHOUT the United States whereever the name of New England is held in respect there is the name of Denman Thompson a household word. His genius has embodied in a drama the finer yet homlier characteristics of New England life, its simplicity, its rugged honesty, its simple piety, its benevolence, partially hid beneath a rough and uncouth exterior. His drama is an epica prose poem-arousing a loyal and patriotic love for the land of the Pilgrims in the hearts of her sons, whether at home, on the rolling prairies of the West, in the sunny South, amid the grand scenes of the Sierras, or on the Pacific slope.

That Denman Thompson was not a native of New Hampshire was rather the result of chance. His parents were natives of Swanzey, where they are still living at a ripe old age, and where they have always lived, save for a few years preceeding and following the birth of their children. In 1831 the parents moved to Girard, Erie County, Pennsylvania, when, October 15, 1833, was born their gifted son. The boy was blessed with one brother and two sisters, and death has yet to strike its first blow in the family.

At the age of thirteen years Denman accompanied his family to the old home in Swanzey, where for several years he received the advantages of the education afforded by the district school. For his higher education he was indebted to the excellent scholastic opportunities afforded by the Mount Cæsar Seminary in Swanzey.

At the age of nineteen he entered the employ of his uncle in Lowell, Massachusetts, serving as book-keeper in a wholesale store, and in that city he made

his debut as Orasman in the military drama of the FRENCH SPY.

In 1854, at the age of twenty-one years, he was engaged by John Nickerson, the veteran actor and manager, as a member of the stock company of the Royal Lyceum, Toronto. From the first his success was assured, for aside from his natural adaptation to his profession he possesses indomitable perscverance, a quality as necessary to the rise of an artist as genius. On the provincial boards of Toronto he studied and acted for the next few years, perfecting himself in his calling and preparing for wider fields. Then he acted the rollicking Irishman to perfection; the real live Yankee, with his genuine mannerisms and dialect, with proper spirit and without ridiculous exaggeration, and the Negro, so open to burlesque. The special charm of his acting in those characters was his artistic execution. He never stooped to vulgarities, his humor was quaint and spontaneous, and the entire absence of apparent effort in his performance gave his audience a most favorable impression of power in reserve. His favorite characters were Salem Scudder in THE OCTOROON, and Myles Na Coppaleen in COLLEEN BAWN.

In April, 1862, Mr. Thompson started for the mother country, and there his reception was worthy a returning son who had achieved a well-earned reputation. His opening night in London was a perfect ovation, and during his engagement the theatre was crowded in every part. He met with flattering success during his brief tour, performing at Edinburg and Glasgow before his return to Toronto the following fall.

From that time must be dated the

career of Mr. Thompson as a star or leading actor and manager, at first in low comedy, so called, or eccentric drama, and later, in what he has made a classic New England drama.

Mr. Thompson is the author of several very pleasing and successful comedies, but the play JOSHUA WHITCOMB is the best known and most popular. The leading character is said to have been drawn from Captain Otis Whitcomb, who died in Swanzey in 1882, at the age of eighty-six. Cy Prime, who "could have proved it had Bill Jones been alive," died in that town, a few years since, while Len Holbrook still lives there. General James Wilson, the veteran, who passed away a short time since, was well known to the older generation of today. The last scene of the drama is laid in Swanzey and the scenery is drawn from nature very artistically. Mr. Thompson is the actor as well as creator of the leading character in the play. The good old man is drawn from the quiet and comforts of his rural home to the perplexities of city life in Boston. There his strong character and good sense offset his simplicity and ignorance. He acts as a kind of Providence in guiding the lives of others. To say that the play is pure is not enough it is ennobling.

The success of the play has been wonderful. Year after year it draws crowded houses—and it will, long after the genius of Mr. Thompson's acting becomes a tradition.

Mr. Thompson is a gentleman of wide culture and extensive reading and information. Not only with the public but with his professional brethren he is very popular on account of his amiable character. Naturally he is of a quiet and benevolent disposition, and has the good word of everyone to whom he is known.

As one of a stock company he never

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disappointed the manager as a manager he never disappointed the public. In private life he has been very happy in his marital relations, having married Miss Maria Bolton in July, 1860. Three children-two daughters and one son, have blessed their union.

A book could well be written on the adventures and incidents that have attended the presentation of the great play since its inception. Nowhere is it more popular than in the neighborhood of Mr. Thompsons's summer home. When a performance is had in Keene the good people of Swanzey demand a special matinee for their benefit, from which the citizens of Keene are supposed to be excluded.

In Colorado a Methodist camp-meeting was adjourned and its members attended the play en masse. Such is the charm of the play that it never loses its

attraction.

Mr. Thompson is in the prime of life, about fifty years old. His home is in New Hampshire; his birthplace was in Pennsylvania. He made his debut in Massachusetts, and received his professional training in Canada; he is a citizen of the United States, and is always honored where genius is recognized.

Like the favorite character, Joshua Whitcomb, in his favorite play, Mr. Thompson is personally sensitive, kindhearted, self-sacrificing; he never speaks ill of any one, delights in doing good, and enjoys hearing and telling a good story; he is quiet, yet full of fun; generous to a fault. His company has become much attached to him.

In the village of Swansey is Mr. Thompson's summer home; a beautiful mansion, surrounded by grounds where art and nature combine to please. The hospitality of the house is proverbial, but its chief attraction is its well-stocked library.

In the elimination of an unusually large amount of dead assets under the requirements of the National Bank law, previous to extension of the corporate existence of a bank, the very interesting question is brought to notice, of what is the proper construction of the law in regard to reducing and restoring the surplus fund.

Does the law forbid the payment of a dividend by a National Bank when the effect of such payment will be to reduce the surplus fund of the bank below an amount equal to one-tenth of its net profits since its organization as a National Bank; and if so, upon what ground? It does, and for the following

reasons.

The power to declare dividends is granted by section 5199 of the Revised Statutes of the United States in the following language: "The Directors of any association (National Bank) may semi-annually declare a dividend of so much of the net profits of the association as they shall judge expedient; but each association shall, before the declaration of a dividend, carry onetenth of its net profits of the preceding half year to its surplus fund until the same shall amount to twenty per cent. of its capital stock."

The question at once arises, what are the net profits from which dividends may be declared, and do they include the surplus fund? It is held that the net profits are the earnings left on hand after charging off expenses, taxes and losses, if any, and carrying to surplus fund the amount required by the law, and that the surplus fund is not to be considered as net profits available for divi

dends, for, if it were, the Directors of a bank could at any time divide the surplus among the shareholders. It would only be necessary to go through the form of carrying one-tenth of the net profits to surplus, whereupon, if the surplus be net profits available for the purpose of a dividend, the amount so carried can be withdrawn and paid away at once, thereby defeating the obvious purpose of the law in requiring a portion of each six month's earnings to be carried to the surplus fund, that purpose being to provide that a surplus fund equal to twenty per cent. of the bank's capital shall be accumulated.

The law is to be so construed as to give effect to all its parts, and any construction that does not do so is manifestly unsound. Therefore a construction which would render inoperative the requirement for the accumulation of a surplus fund cannot be correct, and the net profits available for dividends must be determined by the amount of earnings on hand other than the surplus fund when that fund does not exceed a sum equal to one-tenth of the earnings of the bank since its organization.

Having shown what the net profits available for dividends are, the only other question that can arise is: Can losses and bad debts be charged to the surplus fund and the other earnings used for paying dividends, or must all losses and bad debts be first charged against earnings other than the surplus fund, so far as such earnings will admit of it, and the surplus, or a portion of it, used only when other earnings shall be exhausted?

This question is virtually answered above, for if the object of the law in requiring the creation of a surplus fund may not be defeated by one means it may not by another; if it may not be defeated by paying away the amounts carried to surplus in dividends, neither may it be by charging losses to the surplus and at the same time using the other earnings for dividends.

Moreover, section 5204 of the Revised Statutes of the United States provides as follows: "If losses have at any time been sustained by any such association, equal to or exceeding its undivided profits then on hand, no dividend shall be made; and no dividend shall ever be made by any association, while it continues its banking operations, to an amount greater than its net profits then on hand, deducting therefrom its losses and bad debts."

This language fixes the extent to which dividends may be made at the amount of the "net profits " on hand after deducting therefrom losses and bad debts, and as it has been shown above that the surplus fund cannot be considered "net profits," available for dividends within the meaning of the law, it follows that in order to determine the amount of net earnings available for dividends the losses must first be deducted from the earnings other than surplus.

It is to be observed also that section 5204 specifies that if losses have at any time been sustained by a bank equal to or exceeding its "undivided profits" on hand no dividends shall be made.

Now the surplus fund is not undivided profits, except in so far as it is earnings not divided among the shareholders. It is made upon a division of the profits

so much to the stockholders and so

much to the surplus fund. If the law had intended that losses might be charged to surplus fund in order to leave

the other earnings available for dividends it is to be presumed that care would not have been taken to use the words "undivided profits," in the connection in which they are used, as stated above.

Furthermore, if losses may be charged to surplus when at the same time the other earnings are used for dividends to shareholders, a bank may go on declaring dividends, and never accumulate any surplus fund whatever if losses be sustained, as they are in the history of nearly every bank. A construction of the law which would render inoperative the requirement for the creation of a surplus cannot be sound; and as the only way to insure that a surplus shall be accumulated and maintained is to charge losses against other earnings as far as may be before trenching upon the surplus; it must be that the law intended that the "undivided profits" which are not in the surplus fund shall first be used to meet losses.

To a full understanding of the subject it is proper to say that after using all other earnings on hand at the usual time for declaring a dividend to meet losses the whole or any part of the surplus may be used if the losses exceed the amount of the earnings other than surplus, and then at the end of another six months a dividend may be made if the earnings will admit of it, one-tenth of the earnings being first carried to surplus and the re-accumulation of the fund thus begun.

This is because the law has been

complied with by charging the losses against the "undivided profits," as far as they will go, and it is impossible to do more, or require more to be done, for the re-establishment of the state of things that existed prior to losses having been sustained than to do what the law requires shall be done to originally establish that state of things.