he tune of Yankee Doodle. [Laughter.] This
worked very well as an aid to the memory in school, but when the boys
went into business it often led to inconvenience. When a boy got a
situation in a grocery-store and customers were waiting for their
change, he never could tell the product of two numbers without
commencing at the beginning of the table and singing up till he had
reached those numbers. In case the customer's ears had not received a
proper musical training, this practice often injured the business of the
store. [Laughter.]

It is said that the Yankee has always manifested a disposition for
making money, but he never struck a proper field for the display of his
genius until we got to making paper money. [Laughter.] Then every man
who owned a printing-press wanted to try his hand at it. I remember that
in Washington ten cents' worth of rags picked up in the street would be
converted the next day into thousands of dollars.

An old mule and cart used to haul up the currency from the Printing
Bureau to the door of the Treasury Department. Every morning, as
regularly as the morning came, that old mule would back up and dump a
cart-load of the sinews of war at the Treasury. [Laughter.] A patriotic
son of Columbia, who lived opposite, was sitting on the doorstep of his
house one morning, looking mournfully in the direction of the mule. A
friend came along, and seeing that the man did not look as pleasant as
usual, said to him, "What is the matter? It seems to me you look kind of
disconsolate this morning." "I was just thinking," he replied, "what
would become of this government if that old mule was to break down."
[Laughter and applause.] Now they propose to give us a currency which is
brighter and heavier, but not worth quite as much as the rags. Our
financial horizon has been dimmed by it for some time, but there is a
lining of silver to every cloud. We are supposed to take it with 4121/2
grains of silver--a great many more grains of allowance. [Laughter.]
Congress seems disposed to pay us in the "dollar of our daddies"--in the
currency which we were familiar with in our childhood. Congress seems
determined to pay us off in something that is "child-like and Bland."
[Laughter and applause.] But I have detained you too long already.
[Cries of "No, no; go on!"]

Why, the excellent President of your Society has for the last five
minutes been looking at me like a man who might be expected, at any
moment, to break out