They thank God over there whenever a well-raised check drifts in; they rush it right around to Wally for it’ll make him forget to insult customers for a whole day at a time. A good forgery sometimes saves the other officers from practically all argument with Wally for a week; while if they can just get a good counterfeiting job to occupy him,--well, they hardly dare pray for good luck like that. Everything was humming so and borrowers were looking so relieved when I wandered in that I knew Wally was happily engaged; and soon somebody told me the good news. Fresh and unusually deceptive counterfeit bank notes were in circulation. Wally wasn’t at his desk; he was in the Directors’ Room which he had to himself, and all that the others had to do to keep him harmless was to send him the new Federal Reserve notes as they were pushed into the tellers’ windows. I found him with a catch of seven bad ones already this morning, and the banking day yet was young; five twenties, he had on the table before him, and two fifties. He greeted me with a happy glint in his eyes and shoved the secret service circular at me. “Read that first”; so I read. “Twenty-dollar Federal Reserve Note on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; check letter ‘A’ plate No. 121; Carter Glass, Secretary of the Treasury; John Burke, Treasurer of the United States; portrait of Cleveland. “This counterfeit is a steel-plate production, with the exception of numbering, and is a particularly close and excellent piece of work; even the scrollwork of the borders is uniform and good. The numbering is clean and clear, and appears to have been done serially, as no two notes yet received bear the same number. It is printed on special paper which when flat closely resembles the genuine, but is too brittle when creased. “The face of the bill is unusually deceptive, the seal and numbering being particularly good; the faults in the portrait are actually microscopic, consisting in a slight broadening of portrait of Cleveland; the texture of the paper, however, together with the frequent bunching of the silk fiber inserted, should detect this counterfeit.” Wally ecstatically brandished one of his twenties beside one of the fifties before me.