══════════════════════════╤══════════════════════════════════ Legal, $4,000.00│Counterfeit, $20.00 Full Currency, 900.00│Discount, 5.00 Odds, 40.00│Rejected, 5.00 Discounted, 20.00│Short by Inventory, 15.00 ——— ————│Short by Strap, $45.00 $4,960.00│Over by Strap, 5.00 │ ——— │Net Short, $40.00 ══════════════════════════╧══════════════════════════════════ The $4,960 is immediately sent to the bank in any denomination of new notes requested, or if no such request has been made, it is sent in exactly the denominations received. And now our lady-counter proceeds to attend the cancelling of the notes which she has counted, and which the Treasury has already redeemed. A messenger carries her precious bundle in a box, but she must keep messenger, box, and bundle in sight; for, from the moment that she receives it, till she places it in the last cash-account clerk’s hands, she is personally responsible for its contents. If, by any possibility, it could be spirited away, she would be obliged to pay for every ragged dollar out of her little stipend. This is a bustling sight. Messengers, each with a counter, are rushing in and out with their boxes full of strapped and labelled currency. Round a large table crowd many fair women, while every instant “thud! thud!” strike the precious packages. Each in turn is taken up by the canceller and set between the teeth of Uncle Sam’s cancelling machine. This is fashioned out of two heavy horizontal steel bars, five feet in length, working on pivots. To the shorter end of each is attached a punch, while the other is connected by a lever with a crank, in the sub-basement below, which is propelled by a turbine water-wheel furnished with Potomac-water from one of the pipes of the building. Under its grinding “punch” our poor little dollar goes, and with it a hundred dollars beside. With a savage accuracy it stabs two holes through every one. This is done for the purpose of absolute cancellation. Then each bundle is returned to its box, the messenger picks it up, the counter follows, and both hasten to the cash-account clerk of the division, whose business it is to see if all the money received and delivered to the counters, has been returned and accounted for. Not until she sees her box of cancelled notes safe in the hands of this clerk, does the counter’s personal responsibility end.