annihilated by a ladder? By act of Congress, the Treasurer of the United States is constituted the agent of the national banks for the redemption of their notes. The agency, since July 1, 1875, is one of the divisions in his office. Regular provision is made by Congress in the appropriation bills for the salaries of the force of this division. Careful accounts are kept of every item of expense incurred during the year, and at the end of the twelvemonth the sum disbursed is apportioned among the banks according to the number of the notes of each that have been handled, and assessments are made for the several amounts. The circulation of national banks being redeemable in greenbacks, each bank is required by law to keep on deposit with the Treasurer legal tenders to the amount of five per cent. of its outstanding issue as a fund for the redemption of its notes. The present law provides for ninety-eight clerks in the agency, ranging in grade from the messenger to the superintendent. Of this number, those employed in handling money are divided into two forces, under the direction, respectively, of the receiving teller and the assorting teller. The business of the former force is to receive the shipments coming from the various banks and sub-treasuries for redemption, count the money, and report the amounts for return remittances; that of the latter force is to assort the notes and prepare them for delivery to the Comptroller of the Currency for destruction or to the banks for reissue. This double process may seem at first sight very simple and easy; but in fact it is extremely complex and difficult; and the division in which it is carried on may fairly be counted among the most thoroughly organized and systematically conducted parts of all the machinery devised by the Government for the transaction of the manifold public business. And no wonder, when it is recollected that there are now in circulation nine denominations of national bank notes, the issue of twenty-three hundred and forty individual institutions, amounting in the aggregate to three hundred and twenty millions of dollars; and that every one of these notes, and every dollar of this total, must ultimately, by those ninety-eight clerks and their successors, be separated from the mass, and assigned, under the proper description, with unerring precision, each to the bank by which that particular unit of this vast volume was emitted and must be redeemed.