brown mouse (broun mous) n. 1. Affectionate term for the 1969 edition of "Comptroller's Handbook of Examination Procedure," so named because of its brown cover, a.k.a. brown rat. 2. A small, furry rodent of the family Muridae or Cricetidae, as the common house mouse, brown in color, with a long naked tail.

The first comptroller earned $5,000 per year and led a headquarters staff that consisted of seven employees, including three clerks, two copyists, and a messenger.

Examiners earned $5 for each day of examination, plus $2 for every 25 miles of travel. They paid their assistants out of their own pockets. Complaints arose about low pay.

The country’s first national bank failure, at the First National Bank in Attica, N.Y., came on the same day – April 14, 1865 – that an assassin shot President Abraham Lincoln.

The president, who had signed the law that created the OCC, died the next day.

Cello Beaver Utterance
(Translation: Cipher Code Book Used)

In the days when national bank examiners relied on telegraph messages to relay information to headquarters, they encoded their messages using a pocket-sized “Cipher Code” book. The agency had compiled the book “with special reference to brevity, secrecy and economy,” according to a 1926 version.

"In preparing a message in cipher ample space should be left between words and sentences to avoid their being run together by the telegraph operator," the book instructed.

That’s Memoirs in Texan

National Bank Examiner Paschal Brantley “Preacher” Knight tapped out his memoirs on “Old Blessed,” his time-worn typewriter, before retiring from the OCC in 1979. He entitled his work, "”Memwaws’ of Preacher Knight: The next to the last old time national bank examiners in Texas." Here is an excerpt:

When I examined banks in Amarillo, it was one of the most severe drought times. It was a time when it never rained because the sky plumb forgot how. It was so dry that they were spraying the catfish for ticks in the Canadian River…

In my Amarillo days you could examine a bank in just a day. We were a little late that particular day completing the examination. Frank [a banker in New Mexico] had a loan on a race horse. The horse was entered in a race in Albuquerque. We were awaiting the outcome of the race so we’d know whether or not to charge the note off. The horse lost and they made the loss entry so we could get on our way up to Amarillo.

Check back here for more installments from the Preacher’s “Memwaws.”