The unlimited variation in money complicates every petty detail of life in Siberia. Because each purchase resolves itself into an argument over the merit of the paper you offer--or take. And I found it less wearing to wash my own handkerchiefs than to engage in a wordy battle with a Russian-speaking Chino. The illogical variation in the sizes of paper money presents complications within complications. For size, in the case of Imperials, has nothing to do with value. A thousand-ruble note is as ample as your commission from the President. Which leads you into the assumption that a small note is of small value. Not so. In this land of topsy-turvy, a twenty-or forty-ruble note is one-sixth the size of a five-ruble note. (And by virtue of somebody’s whim, a ten-ruble note is only slightly smaller than a five!) And if an Allied officer gets thoroughly acquainted with a five-ruble note, can you blame him if he tips his drosky-driver with a tiny twenty-ruble note which he mistakes for twenty kopecks? Even in a land where unbacked money is good, there is actually some money that is bad! Siberia is papered with Imperial counterfeits. This increases the strain on the newcomer. One must become an expert in identifying money, or go broke. Some notes are good if there is a dot in one corner of the engraved border: if the dot is missing, so is the value. The counterfeit Imperial twenty-ruble notes have the zero standing straight up: the genuine have the zero a little askew--the counterfeiter having improved on the Imperial engraving! You soon learn all sorts of devices by which you return to circulation your bad money. You contrive to pay off drosky-drivers hastily, and in dark streets. For the first time in your life you delight in tipping the hat-bandits at the doors of restaurants. By the time these rascals have discovered your iniquity, you have disappeared into the frozen night. Gamblers palm off their faulty currency in the excitement of the game, there being no time to submit the pot to cross examination. But beware, oh stranger, the too-obliging person who would turn your American money into rubles! In addition to counterfeiting, there is another worry. The banks of some inland cities devised a method of depreciating vast quantities of Bolshevist money not held by themselves. In this way: They stamped their own; and generously offered to stamp, before a certain date, any currency that was submitted to them for marking. But the date set followed close upon the announcement, which excluded from the benefits of the plan, all persons who did not learn of the offer and so failed to have their money stamped on time. The banks, since they refused to recognize unstamped notes, now had--by this system of crossing their fingers--the bulk of the “good” money!