About a quarter of a mile from the Treasury Department, in what is called “White Lot,” stands the furnace which is to consume our dollar. The furnace, and the building in which it stands, was built expressly for this purpose for the sum of ten thousand dollars. The furnace is ten feet high, seven in diameter, circular and open at the top. With it is connected an air-blower, which is attached to an engine, the steam for which comes from a boiler some twenty rods distant. On the ground about lie piles of cinders—the metallic ashes of extinct dollars, compounded of pins, sulphur, printer’s ink and dirt. To this furnace, filled with shavings in advance, every other day comes “The Burning Committee,” bearing the boxes of doomed dollars, sealed finally in the Register’s and Secretary’s Bureaus. This Committee is formed of a person from each of these Bureaus, with a fourth not connected with the Departments. In their presence the final seals are broken—the complicated locks of the furnace opened. Then the packages are thrown into the flames, each “lot” being called and checked by the Committee, the amount averaging about one million five hundred thousand dollars every other day. At the same hour about one hundred thousand dollars in national bank notes are burned at another and smaller furnace. Beside cancelled money, internal revenue and postage stamps, checks and defective new money are all consumed in this furnace. Here the three official delegates, with a few spectators, stand to witness the sight. Worn out, used up, gone by—all pass into the furnace, our dollar with the rest. The furnace is locked, by official hands, with nine distinct locks. A match is set to the shavings; the smoke of the sacrifice begins to ascend—the Committee depart. The fire and the money are left alone together for the next twenty-four hours. To-morrow a smutty aerolite, smothered in ashes, will be the significant “finis” of the story of our dollar. It has had its day! CHAPTER XXXIII. THE GREAT CASH-ROOM—THE WATCH-DOG OF THE TREASURY.