elow the Bank are many bars
of gleaming gold, like those we have seen at the Mint; these are sent
here for safety, and in time will go to the Mint to be coined. The Bank
of England is very strong and safe, and anyone who keeps his money there
has no fear that he will lose it. The Bank is allowed by law to make
notes of its own, which are as good as money, and are received instead
of money, but it cannot make more than a certain number of these notes
in any one year. You have heard of bank-notes, perhaps? Have you ever
seen one--a crisp, crackly bit of paper, with some printing on it, that
could be burnt up any minute? These seem very unsafe to keep, but they
are convenient. If a man wants to go away for some time he could not
carry with him a great many gold sovereigns, for they would be so
heavy; but if he takes a number of bank-notes they are quite light and
easy to carry, and are just as good as money. The most common is a
five-pound note. Of course, accidents do happen sometimes when people
are careless. I heard of a man who lit his pipe with a five-pound note,
thinking it was just an ordinary bit of paper, but this was very
careless; it was an expensive pipe-light to cost five pounds.

In the Bank you are shown many interesting things, and one of the chief
of these is a book where are kept all the imitation bank-notes, called
forgeries, that men have made and tried to persuade people were real
ones. In some cases these are so cleverly done that even the bankers
themselves hardly knew the difference, and many, many people had been
cheated by them.

The great machines for printing bank-notes are inside the bank, and each
note has a different number. Let us follow one throughout its life. It
is printed on special paper made for the bank, and not sold to anyone
else, and it is printed in the Bank's own machine. It goes in at one end
of the machine, just a blank bit of paper, and comes out at the other
worth five pounds. This seems almost more wonderful than making gold
coins. Downstairs, in the office of the Bank, a man comes in who has an
account with the Bank--that is to say, he has given the Bank people a
large sum of money to keep for him--and he takes out some of it when he
likes. He comes this morning to ask for twenty pounds, and it is given
to him in four five-pound notes, which he folds up and puts in his
pocket-book and then he goes away. He has just got outside the Bank,
when a friend comes up, and says: 'I