ch are to appear on the back of the half-dollar.
Directly above the die, on the end of a rod, which works up and down
with the most exquisite accuracy, is the sunken impression of the face.

[Illustration: THE CUTTING PRESS.]

The woman gathers up a handful of the planchets and drops them one at a
time into a brass tube, which they just fit. They slip down in the
tube, and as the lowest planchet slides from under the tube, two small
steel arms spring out and grasp it and lay it on the die. At the same
instant, the upper die descends with a quick thump, and the silver
counter, stamped in a twinkling on both sides, falls into a box below.
In an instant, another takes its place, and thus they go on dropping
under the swiftly moving rod, and turning into coins in a flash.

[Illustration: "THE LONG STRIP FULL OF HOLES."]

Take up one of the coins and study it carefully. Every mark, letter,
number and bit of decoration is deeply cut in the metal. Even the
"reeding," or roughened edge, is stamped sharply, and we can tell just
what the coin is by feeling of it with the finger, even in the dark.
This last step finishes the work. The money is made, coined and ready
for exchange in the shop and market. Sometimes you may have noticed
that coins, like the nickel five-cent and the silver twenty-cent piece,
have smooth edges. In these coins the reeding is omitted. The dies in
the presses have only the letters and figures of the face and back of
the coin, and when the planchet is caught between them the metal is
squeezed up against the smooth sides of the die, and none of the little
reeding marks on the edge are formed.

"And now," says our kind conductor, "you have seen all the process of
making money. This next room is the cabinet, and here you can remain as
long as you please."

But I have not time to tell you half the curious and instructive things
you may see in this apartment. There are coins of all nations and ages.
Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, bearing effigies of forgotten kings and
emperors; curious oblong coins, of very fine workmanship, from China
and Japan, and others of a square shape with a hole in the middle, that
they may be strung on a string, instead of putting them into a purse.
Smallest of all, so small that you might overlook it, if your attention
was not especially drawn to it, is the "widow's mite." Perhaps----who
knows?--this may be the very coin which, dropped into the
trumpet-shaped mouth of the treasury,