without writer’s cramp.  The rubber stamp was Miller’s official signature.  Then with a mighty roar the torrent burst into a deluge.  The Floyd Street quarters were besieged by a clamoring multitude fighting to see which of them could give up his money first, and there had to be a special delivery for Miller’s mail.  He rented the whole house and hired fifty clerks.  You could deposit your money almost anywhere, from the parlor to the pantry, the clothes closet or the bath-room.  Fridays the public stormed the house en masse, since the money must be deposited on that day to draw interest for the following week.  The crush was so enormous that the stoop broke down.  Imagine it!  In quiet Brooklyn!  People struggling to get up the steps to cram their money into Miller’s pockets!  There he sat, behind a desk, at the top of the stoop, solemnly taking the money thrown down before him and handing out little pink and green stamped receipts in exchange.  There was no place to put the money, so it was shoved on to the floor behind him.  Friday afternoons Miller and his clerks waded through it, knee high.  There was no pretense of bookkeeping.  Simply in self-defense Miller issued in October a pronunciamento that he could not in justice to his business, consent to receive less than fifty dollars at one time.  Theoretically, there was no reason why the thing should not have gone on practically forever, Miller and everybody else becoming richer and richer.  So long as the golden stream swelled five times each year everybody would be happy.  How could anybody fail to be happy who saw so much money lying around loose everywhere?

[Illustration:  One of Miller’s Franklin Syndicate Receipts.]

But the business had increased to such an extent that Miller began to distrust his own capacity to handle it.  He therefore secured a partner in the person of one Edward Schlessinger, and with him went to Charlestown, Mass., for the purpose of opening another office, in charge of which they placed a man named Louis Powers.  History repeated itself.  Powers shipped the deposits to Miller every day or two by express.  Was there ever such a plethora of easy money?

But Schlessinger was no Miller.  He decided that he must have a third of the profits (Heaven knows how they computed them!) and have them, moreover, each day in cash.  Hence there was a daily accounting, part of the receipts being laid aside to pay off interest checks and interest, and the balance divided.  Schlessinger carried his off in a bag; Miller took the rest, cash, money orders and checks, and deposited it in a real bank.  How the money poured in may be realized from the fact that the excess of receipts over disbursements for the month ending November 16th was four hundred and thirty thousand dollars.