But although Mr. Akroyd has done so much as a master for the men and women employed by him, he has perhaps done still more as a public benefactor by establishing the Yorkshire Penny Bank for Savings.  As early as the year 1852, Mr. Akroyd instituted a Savings Bank to enable his workpeople to deposit sums of from one penny upwards.  The system was found to work so well, and to have such a beneficial effect in making people provident, that he conceived the idea of extending its operations throughout the West Riding of Yorkshire.  Having obtained the co-operation of several influential gentlemen, the scheme was started in 1856, and an Act of Parliament was obtained for constituting the Yorkshire Penny Savings Bank as it now exists.

Mr. Akroyd has recently furnished an Introduction to the narrative of the Yorkshire Penny Bank, from which we extract the following passage:—­

“The way by which thoughts, or chance suggestions, enter into the minds of men, is sometimes passing strange!  They may be the offspring of wayward fancy; or they may be the whisperings from a higher source.  To the latter cause I am willing to attribute the idea which flashed across my mind during the present year to give to the public something beyond the bare outline of the scheme, in which, for years, many of them have taken a warm personal interest.

“It occurred in this wise.  When in town, I occasionally attended, during Lent, the services at Whitehall Chapel, for the sake of hearing a Lenten sermon preached by one of Her Majesty’s chaplains.  One remarkable sermon of the series was delivered by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, on the 12th of March, on behalf of the Supplemental Ladies’ Association of the London Society of Parochial Mission Women.  In the sketch which the preacher gave of this excellent institution, he referred to a book entitled ’East and West,’ in which the benefits derived by the London poor from the association are clearly set forth; but he dwelt chiefly on the wide separation which divides rich from poor, class from class, in London; and on the dangers which threaten Society from this cause, as was recently exemplified in France.  Such was the impression made upon me by the sermon, that, before many days had elapsed, I had purchased ’East and West,’ and given the book a careful perusal.

“From previous observation I had been struck with the sad contrast between the luxurious lives of those who reside at the West End of London, and the struggle for a hard, wretched existence which the crowded poor at the East, or in close purlieus elsewhere, are obliged to maintain until death closes the scene.  How to bridge over the wide chasm intervening between the extremes of high and low in society, without injury to self-respect on either side, was the puzzling question, the problem to be solved.  Yet, from the admirable introduction to this most useful little work, by the Countess Spencer, it appeared that a lady of high rank, and her noble-minded associates, had in some measure solved the problem, and bridged over the chasm.