Excerpt from The Country Banker: His Clients, Cares, and Work, From an Experience of Forty Years AN extensive and flourishing system of banking is an indisputable proof of the existence of great and general wealth and material prosperity. There may be in dividual instances of success among those who act as bankers in communities where the masses are poor, but in such cases it will be found usually that their occupation partakes largely of the nature of money-changing, which is the first step beyond barter, or the beginning of all mercantile transactions. While it will be remembered generally that the first mention of money-changers occurs in the Bible, it may not be known to so many that, in Greece, the temples were the first banks. Delphi and Olympia offered superior advantages, in the way of secu rity, as places of deposit for gold and silver, and, at the same time, as the gathering places of pilgrims and devo tees, they gave both useful and profitable occupation to the money-changers. Joint-stock banks are said to have been suggested originally by Xenophon, who proposed to stimulate, through them, commercial adventure. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.