Manchester.
_Meaning of "Waste-book"_ (Vol. iii., pp. 118. 195. 251. 307.).--The
gentlemen who have hitherto attempted to explain this term are very
evidently unacquainted with the subject on which they write; with the
exception, however, of MR. CROSSLEY, whose quotation from the
_Merchant's Mirrour_ confirms what I am about to say. To the clerk in a
merchant's counting-house, like him
"Who pens a stanza when he should engross,"
the waste-book may indeed be a weary waste; but he does not call it so
for that reason, any more than he gives poetical names to the day-book
or ledger. In short, we must not go to the merchant's counting-house at
all to discover its meaning; or, if we do, "the book-keeper and cashier"
who makes the Query may refer us to one of the elders, or head of the
firm, who, if he be not too proud to own it, may just recollect that his
progenitors or predecessors in the _chandler's shop_ made their rough
entries in a book which was literally waste. For origins we must look to
the lowest forms or types existing. The merchant's system of
book-keeping was not invented perfect; and we may see its various stages
in the different gradations of trade at the present day. In many
respectable shops, in the country especially, the waste-book is formed
by a quire or two of the commonest paper used in the particular trade,
that will bear pen and ink, sown together. An advance upon this is the
waste-book as a distinct book, bound and ruled, of which the day-book or
journal is merely a fair copy; and this being made, the former is held
of no account. The importance, however, of reference to original entries
has no doubt led to the preservation of the "Waste-book" in regular
book-keeping, and a modification of its character.