It was said that wampum was so cunningly made that neither Jew nor Devil could counterfeit it. Nevertheless a Connecticut Yankee rigged up a machine that so disturbed the market value of the beads that in a short time the Long Island mints were closed to the free coinage of clams. Wampum was demonetized through counterfeit, overproduction and imitation; but when this occurred the gentle Puritan didn't have enough of it left to supply the museums. The Indian had parted with his lands and his furs, had redeemed all the outstanding wampum with his labor, and when he went to market to get firewater, he was taught that he must have gold and silver to get it. Then he wanted to ride in blood up to his horse's bridles. Commerce had found a better tool than wampum had become. The buccaneers and the pirates had brought in silver and that defied the Connecticut man's machinery or the Dutchman's imitations. The years pass by and commerce finds that silver, because of overproduction, becomes uncertain and erratic in value, and with the same instinct it chooses gold as a standard of value. A coin of unsteady value is like a knife of uncertain sharpness. It is thrown aside for one that can do all that is expected of it. Gold is such a tool. It is the standard of all first-class nations. It is to-day, and it will remain, the standard of this Republic. The value of the gold dollar is not in the pictures on it. It is in the grains of gold in it. Smash it and melt it, and it buys one hundred cents' worth the world over. Deface a silver dollar and fifty cents of its value goes off yonder among the silent stars. Free coinage means that the silver miner may make fifty cents' worth of silver cancel a dollar's worth of debts. This is a greenback doctrine in a silver capsule. Bimetallism is a diplomatic term for international use. Monometallism with silver as the metal is the dream of the Populist and of the poor deluded Democratic grasshoppers who dance by the moonshine until they get frost-bitten.