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 sionally exciting little scenes in green like the landing of Columbus or the wreck of the Hesperus. But the fine points of the art work had escaped me.

Now it appeared that the government hired expert engravers, not only for esthetic purposes but to make counterfeiting harder. Each issue was printed from steel plates, specially engraved and most particularly guarded. The paper also was specially made by secret process. Now, many years ago, occasionally a real artist and a patient and conscientious workman turned counterfeiter and cut a steel plate as good as the government's, and then, if he had a fair paper to print on and good ink, he gave the secret service a lot of trouble.

"Janvier, some of whose fine work was still in circulation when I started with the bank, was by all odds the best of these," Wally told me. "The secret service had got him about a year earlier; but his souvenirs were still coming in. His paper betrayed him; he couldn't make that; he had to use the best he could get and imitate the silk shred lines with colored ink; but his plates were almost perfect—even to the scroll work of the borders, which the government makes by special lathes; his seals and