Sound money

“ But this spending of money somehow seems to bring us closer to civilization for the moment and we join the churning mass of men within, whose hobnailed shoes produce a great pounding and scraping sound and whose voices are raised in a constant babble of conversation which only the sharp ting, ting of the cash register bells can punctuate. ”

“ Those who hear the cuckoo for the first time thrust immediately their hand in their pockets, and turn their money, or toss a piece into the air, and all this is for luck for the coming year ushered in by the cheering sound of the cuckoo’s notes. ”

“ I, of course, regard it from a scholar’s point of view, and not from that of a financier.”
“I believe in money,” declared the ugly little man frankly. “It should be put forward, when ripe, as a sound financial proposition—just as, no doubt, its discoverer, Peter Holmboe, intended to put it forward.” ”

“ When I was a child of seven years old, my friends, on a holiday, filled my pocket with coppers. I went directly to a shop [413] where they sold toys for children; and, being charmed with the sound of a whistle, that I met by the way in the hands of another boy, I voluntarily offered and gave all my money for one. I then came home, and went whistling all over the house, much pleased with my whistle, but disturbing all the family. My brothers, and sisters, and cousins, understanding the bargain I had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it was worth; ”

“ The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization, the one sound spot in our social conscience. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously and undeniably as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness. ”

“ And the more I thought about the matter the more painfully certain it seemed that the most important and typical modern things could not be done with a chorus. One could not, for instance, be a great financier and sing; because the essence of being a great financier is that you keep quiet. You could not even in many modern circles be a public man and sing; because in those circles the essence of being a public man is that you do nearly everything in private. Nobody would imagine a chorus of money-lenders. ”

“ There the younger of the two spied the purse lying in the grass, and picked it up. But when he opened it and found it full of gold money, he was like one bereft of wits; he flung his arms, he danced, he shouted, he laughed, he acted like a madman; for never had he seen so much wealth in all of his life before—a hundred pieces of gold money!
Now the older of the two was by nature a merry wag, and though he had never had the chance to taste of pleasure, he thought that nothing in the world could be better worth spending money for than wine and music and dancing. ”

“ When they were in the room every one would talk as though all currency save that of the musical banks should be abolished; and yet they knew perfectly well that even the cashiers themselves hardly used the musical bank money more than other people. ”

“ At first the thought of the great stake for which she was playing in terms of currency, with the head of Jim’s father on every note, was much with her. The amazing nature of the offer of five millions of dollars stimulated her imagination, roused her; gold coins are counters in the game of success, signs and tokens. Money alone could not have lured her ”

“ Since the end of 1847, not a penny has come into his own pocket either through piano-playing and conducting, or through teaching. All this, which has yielded such rich capital and interest to others, has cost only sacrifice of time and money to himself. ”

“ The thought that a man could write a piece of music and sell it for money appealed to him as on a par with the thought of disposing for so much cash of his mother or his sweetheart, of his child or one of his own limbs. ”

“ So, once more, with redoubled energy, we resumed our tense, unremitting round of toil. Now, however, it was vastly different. Every bucket of dirt meant money in our pockets, every stroke of the pick a dollar. Not that it was all like the first rich pocket we had struck. It proved a most erratic and puzzling paystreak—one day rich beyond our dreams, another too poor to pay for the panning. We swung on a pendulum of hope and despair. ”

“ The idea behind stamped money is sound. ”

“ His fad is kale that he can see and feel and handle and show and carry about with him. Not merely money in the bank and stocks and bonds and property and real estate, but actual cash. He likes to carry it with him, and he does carry it with him. I guess he likes the feel of it in his billfolder, and the thought that he has got it on him—on him, the poor boy that came out of New England with the red knitted mittens on that everybody has heard so much about. ”

“ In commercial panics, and in times of general distress, the people as a mass did not so much as even think of turning to these banks. A few individuals might do so, some from habit and early training, some from hope of gain, but few from a genuine belief that the money was good; the masses turned instinctively to the other currency. In a conversation with one of the musical bank managers I ventured to hint this as plainly as politeness would allow. ”

“ In the bottom of the nest are thousands of dollar bills—and two-dollar bills—and five-dollar bills—and tens, and twenties, and fifties. There are enough of them to stuff a dozen Scarecrows. Why not use the money? ”

“ People imagine that a piece of paper with pictures on it, with signatures, is money. The greenback is not money—never was; never will be. It is a promise to pay money; not money. The note of the nation is no nearer money than the note of an individual. A bank note is not money. It is a promise to pay money; that is all.
Well, what is a dollar? In the civilized world it is twenty-three grains and twenty-two one hundredths of pure gold. That is a dollar. Well, cannot we make dollars out of silver? ”

“ Then his eyes seemed to travel away into the distance, the look of the dreamer in them; but behind all was that strange, ruddy underglow of revelation which kept emerging from shadows, retreating and emerging, yet always there now, in much or in little, since the burning of the mill.
“I’ve lent a good deal of money without security in my time,” he reflected, “but the only people who ever paid me back were a deaf and dumb man and a flyaway—a woman that was tired of selling herself, and started straight and right with the money I lent her. ”

“ But let us suppose that such an imaginary and impossible state of society really existed, in which money is in circulation, without the exercise of general violence,—silver or gold serving as a measure of value and as a medium of exchange. All the savings in such a society are expressed by money. ”

“ One of the elderly ladies in the corner was saying:
“Every one always seems to enjoy music so much. If we could give a concert, perhaps the singers would give their services, and a manager might give the theater, and——”
“And what should we make?” interrupted Miss Bowles. “We'd be lucky if we cleared a thousand dollars, to say nothing of our own bills for nervous prostration. No, if you want money nowadays you have got to ask for it. ”

“ Such wasteful shilly-shally procedure would be likely to excite mirth in opera bouffe, but bankers who ship gold are very serious about it, and seem to be without enough perception of the ludicrous to see anything funny in its coming and going, although they feel the shoe pinch in its costliness in both time and money. ”

“ When I draw money, it never seems so much money as when it is shovelled at me out of a bright copper shovel. I like to say, ‘In gold,’ and to see seven pounds musically pouring out of the shovel, like seventy; the Bank appearing to remark to me—I italicise appearing—‘if you want more of this yellow earth, we keep it in barrows at your service.’ To think of the banker’s clerk with his deft finger turning the crisp edges of the Hundred-Pound Notes he has taken in a fat roll out of a drawer, is again to hear the rustling of that delicious south-cash wind. ”

“ He knows that, in the dollar, he gives you so much discretion and patience, so much hoeing, and threshing. Try to lift his dollar; you must lift all that weight. In the city, where money follows the skit of a pen, or a lucky rise in exchange, it comes to be looked on as light. ”

“ If the money is wanting, you remain outside in the rain among the boot-blacks; if you have no taste for music, you sleep sullenly in your superb box. I conclude that we must try to earn the four francs for the parterre, but above all to make ourselves acquainted with music. ”

“ Bringing out a handful of silver, I gave him two shillings and a sixpence, whereupon he handed me a half-crown in exchange.
'It looks like a new one,' I remarked.
'I trust it may bring you good fortune, my lad,' he answered. 'Though, in one respect, you certainly seem to be well provided for already.'
I suppose I smiled with satisfaction.
'But,' he continued, 'never forget one thing. Money is the root of all evil—the root of all evil.'
'Do you live in London?' I asked presently. ”

“ I have said that the life-blood of my convictions shall circulate in my money and if I cannot express my soul, my religion, my gospel or news for this world, news about what I want and about what I will have in a world, if I cannot make every dollar, every shilling I earn, go through the world and sing my own little world-song in it, may I never have another shilling or earn another dollar as long as I live! ”

“ Why for years and years and years it’ll go on from one pocket to another, in a millionaire’s house one day, in some burglar’s flat the next, maybe, and in one person’s hand money’ll do good, likely, and in another’s it’ll do harm. ”

“ How is it about honest money? about an unmercurial currency that shall not rise and fall with the temperature of Wall Street, that shall neither tempt the would-be rich to unsafe speculation nor cheat the poor of their earnings? ”

“ But then, again, money is a thing that betrays itself—a secret that is carried by the birds of the air. Had there been any of these gentry about, he might have divined from the way in which she carried herself, that she had fifty pounds in her pocket. ”

“ It cannot soften the woe of the people who are disinclined to the giving away of money, and the cheerful givers need no encouragement. For my part, I like to sit, quite undistracted by soprano solos, and listen to the refined tinkle of the sixpences and shillings, and the vulgar chink of the pennies and ha'pennies, in the contribution-boxes. ”

“ That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security's sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!
Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my mind was much disturbed by indecision whether or no to take the Avenger. ”

“ “She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked. “It’s full of–” I hesitated.
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.
That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money – that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it... ”

“ This story of M. Vincent, as told by these two honest companions, was something like the vulgar legend of other people’s money, so eagerly craved, and so madly dissipated. Easily-gotten wealth is easily gotten rid of. Stolen money has fatal tendencies, and turns irresistibly to gambling, horse-jockeys, fast women, all the ruinous fancies, all the unwholesome gratifications. ”

“ Neither, by destroying money, do I mean burning notes, or throwing gold away. If I burn a five-pound note, or throw five sovereigns into the sea, I hurt no one but myself; nay, I benefit others, for everybody with a pound in his pocket is richer by the withdrawal of my competition in the market. But what I want you to make your readers discover is how the true money is made that will get them houses and dinners; and on the other hand how money is truly lost, or so diminished in value that all they can get in a year will not buy them comfortable houses, nor satisfactory dinners. ”

“ How beauteous are rouleaus! how charming chests Containing ingots, bags of dollars, coins (Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests Weigh not the thin ore where their visage shines, But) of fine unclipt gold, where dully rests Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines, Of modern, reigning, sterling, stupid stamp:— Yes! ready money is Aladdin's lamp. ”

“ You only make me cry: 'Honour is but smoke, glory is but glory, and money is only money!' I ask you, in no craven spirit, is money the only thing for a man to seek who feels in his heart the least spark of poetry? ”

“ If you had the money they would listen to you, for that is the only voice people will heed to-day. If you came here with an abundance of gold, people would hear anything you asked them to in the falls up yonder. ”

“ Samuel Pounce.—But let's see my cash— 'tis very true, the old saying, a man meets with more friendship from strangers than his own relations—Let's see my cash: 1, 2, 3, 4, there on that side; 1, 2, 3, 4, on that side; 'tis a foolish thing to put all one's money in one pocket; 'tis like a man's whole estate in one county—These five in my fob—I'll keep these in my hand, lest I should have a present occasion.—But this town's full of pickpockets ”