Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/189

 New York newspaperman. A brand-new acquisition, only set up within the last few weeks, is a case of French military decorations presented by the French Government—the five grades of the Legion of Honor, the four grades of the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille Militaire. Near these are the United States military and naval medals, a sad and ugly contrast to the delicate art of the French trophies.

I was unfortunate in not being lucky enough to meet Superintendent Joyce, under whose administration the Philadelphia Mint has become the most remarkable place of coinage in the world; or Mr. Eckfeldt, the assayer in chief, who has served the Mint for fifty-four years and is the son of the former assayer and grandson of the Mint's first "coiner," Adam Eckfeldt. These three generations of Eckfeldts have served the Mint for 123 years. But my friend, Mr. Homer L. Pound, the assistant assayer, who modestly speaks of his own thirty years of service as a mere trifle, had by this time shown me so much that my brain reeled. He permitted me to change my pocket money into brand new coinage of 1919 as a souvenir, and then I left. And as for Lenine and Trotzky, the experience would have killed them!