Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/70

 merchandise, and which is counted, not decimally, but chiefly by multiples. Thus when we paid our cabbie, as his fare, a ten-energy piece, we saw that he discharged half of its force into his cab machinery. This E10 piece of money was thus reduced to a E5, and the next application to action would reduce it to a E2.5, and so on. But cabbie had calculated upon the first submultiple as sufficient to accomplish his whole journey. Yes, and, as we also noticed, it actually did so, thus clearing, out of our pockets, one hundred per cent, profit to Mr. Cabbie. I only wish, thought I at the time, that certain other business I could name would pay but half or one-fourth as well. But, to conclude our money exposition, we can always tell the intensity of charge in these Leyden money-pieces by the colour. From old association our highest moneypiece of that kind, that of a thousand Energy, is made to have a yellow or golden hue, while the E500, the E250, and so on, have other distinct hues, all being respectively the result of specially prepared chemico-electric relationship. Of course the decimalcounting notes go up to sums very much higher than such a puny amount for those days as (E1000) a thousand Energy. When we thus slid our money off metals on to Energy, we reckoned roundly that our Energy unit (E1) was equal to the old superseded dollar. There have been increasing facilities of Energy supply since, but also, on the other hand, such increasing demand, that the relative value has been fairly upheld. It may be readily understood that our Energy Mint is an institution at constant work, and that this monetary system gives us marvellous facilities, as compared with the barbarous and helpless old times of mere metallic money.