Much Ado about Five Cents.
By Christian Union
Two gentlemen were talking the other day of the late Secretary Folger's devotion to duty, and the conversation drifted into discussion of the great amount of the detail work in the Treasury Department. As an instance of the scrupulous exactness with which the work in the Redemption Bureau is done, one of the gentlemen told the following story:— "Several years ago," he said, "I was living in the country, and had among my possessions an old desk. One day in going through this I found four pieces of scrip money of small denominations which preceded the return of silver. Two of these pieces were quarters, and a third was a ten-cent scrip. Each of these was in fair condition. The fourth was a ragged and soiled piece of paper, with nothing but its size and feeling to indicate that it ever had been money. After studying it for a long time, I concluded that it was originally a five-cent scrip. I determined to send the three good pieces to the Treasury Department for redemption, more as an experiment than anything else. But my wife insisted that the ragged piece must go along with the rest. To humor her, I inclosed it with the others, and a note asking that the scrip be redeemed. "A week or ten days later I was informed that there was a registered letter at the post-office for me. I found a huge envelope with three red seals and the card of the Treasury Department upon it. In the envelope were several papers, three or four, with printed and written matter upon them. The papers were blanks which had been filled out, and extracts from the law concerning the redemption of fractional currency. From the documents I learned that the three pieces I had supposed were redeemable were counterfeit and of no value, and that the only piece upon which I could base a claim against the Department was the tattered and torn five-cent scrip. Down in one corner of the big envelope was a smaller one, and in one corner of that was a bright nickle five-cent piece which the United States Government had sent me in return for my five-cent scrip."