Passing through the cashier’s office and the superb Marble Cash-room (to which we will soon return), at the opposite end we reach one almost exclusively occupied by the iron vault of the United States Treasury. The double iron doors swing slowly back, and we stand in the money vault of the nation. It looks light and airy as a china-closet. The sealed packages, lining the shelves to the ceiling, are full of money. I hold a small package in my hand of crisp, stamped paper, tied with common twine, and “take it coolly” when the keeper of these coffers tells me that the string ties in one hundred millions of dollars. It doesn’t seem much! On the shelf of a cosy closet are piled some little white bags which have done a deal of travelling. They hold the gold captured from Jefferson Davis’s fleeing trains, taken from the banks of Richmond. You know the banks of Richmond have been very anxious to get their money back, and have sent numerous messengers after it. A small obstacle, in the shape of a fact, separates them from the object of their desire. This gold was rifled from the mint in New Orleans, and before it came to the banks of Richmond belonged to the Treasury of the United States. In this vault is packed away all the money not needed for circulation. A large portion of the money which lines these shelves has never been charged to the Treasurer on the books of the department, therefore, technically, is not yet money, although all ready for use. Every kind of note which the ingenuity of Uncle Sam and his servants ever devised, is here packed and guarded. The compartments of the safe not affording sufficient space, the floor is piled—and as carelessly, apparently, as if with potato or apple bags; but not in fact. The value of every bag and package is known, and not one cent could be taken without being swiftly discovered and pursued. Piles on piles of little bags and packages! this is all, and yet they hold five hundred millions of dollars. Little bags and packages these are, all, and yet for them men toil, struggle, sin—sell their bodies and their souls! On each of the doors of this iron vault are two burglar-proof locks, of the most complicated construction, each on a combination different from the rest. But two or three persons know these combinations, and no person knows the combination to the locks on both doors. Thus it is impossible that they should be fraudulently opened, save by collusion between two persons who know the combination. This is but one of the safeguards which the Government sets about its treasures.