down hard upon her side of the scales, but still the
servants shovelled in the bright, fresh pine-tree shillings, until Mrs.
Sewall began to rise. Then the mintmaster ordered them to forbear.
'There, you Sewall,' said the magnanimous old money maker, 'take these
shillings for my daughter's portion. Use her kindly, and thank Heaven
for her; for it is not every wife that is worth her weight in silver.'
And Master Sewell took Mistress Sewall and thirty thousand pounds (not
avoirdupois, but sterling).

The liberty cap was first used as an emblem by the committee of safety
organized at Philadelphia early in 1775. At a meeting on the 31st of
August of that year, it was resolved by the committee that Owen Biddle
provide a seal for the use of the board, about the size of a dollar,
with a cap of liberty, with this motto: 'This is my right, and I will
defend it.' Upon the first cent issued by the United States Mint for
circulation, in 1793, the cap appears. This cap is the Phrygian cap, and
all nations recognize it as the badge of liberty. When Spartacus rose at
the head of his fellow slaves against their Roman masters to obtain
liberty, his followers were distinguished by this cap. Though their
effort was unsuccessful, the principle of liberty still exists, to be
fought for until the last manacle is struck from the last slave. And
mankind has recognized that early struggle for freedom by adopting the
cap as one of the attributes of the goddess of freedom.

The freaks of currency are singular. The early Greeks bartered with
cattle; hence we derive _pecunia_ (money) from pecus (the flock). Cowry
shells have bought slaves on the African coast, and wampum answered for
money with the Indian, The Carthaginians, Frederick II. at the siege of
Milan, Philip I. and John the Good, kings of France, used stamped
leather, the latter inserting a silver nail in the centre. St. Louis, of
France, issued the black coin made of billon. The Anglo-Saxons used
rings, torques, and bracelets. Homer says the Greeks carried on their
traffic with bars and spikes of brass. Salt is the money of Abyssinia,
and codfish in Iceland. In Adam Smith's day, the Edinburgh workmen
bought bread with nails, and drank from foaming tankards paid for with
spikes. Marco Polo found mulberry-bark money in China, stamped with the
sovereign's seal, which it was death to counterfeit, as was the case
also with the Continental currency of our own country. The first
families of V