When his invention was complete he thought with dismay and alarm that, as almost all the expensive stamps affixed to documents in England are raised from the paper, any of them could be forged by an office-boy of average intelligence. The English government has long obtained an important part of its revenue by the sale of these stamps, many of which are high priced, costing as much as twenty-five dollars. If the stamp on a will, a deed, or other document is not genuine, the document has no validity. As soon as he found what mischief had been done, he set to work to devise a remedy. After several months' experiment and reflection he invented a stamp which could neither be forged nor removed from the document and used a second time. A large business, it seems, had been done in removing stamps from old parchments of no further use, and selling them to be used again. The inventor called at the stamp office and had an interview with the chief, who frankly owned that the government was losing half a million dollars a year by the use of old stamps; and he was then considering methods of avoiding the loss. Bessemer exhibited his invention, the chief feature of which was the perforation of the stamp in such a way that forgery and removal were equally impossible. The commissioner finally agreed to adopt it. The next question was as to the compensation of the young inventor, and he was given his choice either to accept a sum of money or an office for life in the stamp office of four thousand dollars a year. As he was engaged to be married, he chose the office, and went home rejoicing, feeling that he was a made man. Nor did he long delay to communicate the joyful news to the young lady. To her also he explained his invention, dwelling upon the fact that a five-pound stamp a hundred years old could be taken off a document and used a second time. "Yes," said she, "I understand that; but, surely, if all stamps had a DATE put upon them they could not at a future time be used again without detection." The inventor was startled. He had never thought of an expedient so simple and so obvious. A lover could not but be pleased at such ingenuity in his affianced bride; but it spoiled his invention! His perforated stamp did not allow of the insertion of more than one date. He succeeded in obviating this difficulty, but deemed it only fair to communicate the new idea to the chief of the stamp office. The result was that the government simply adopted the plan of putting a date upon all the stamps afterwards issued, and discarded Bessemer's fine scheme of perforation, which would have involved an expensive and troublesome change of machinery and methods. But the worst of it was that the inventor lost his office, since his services were not needed. Nor did he ever receive compensation for the service rendered.