The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross: Or, Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy CauseMorrison, Gertrude W.
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The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross: Or, Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause
Morrison, Gertrude W.
High school students -- Juvenile fiction; Red Cross and Red Crescent -- Juvenile fiction
"Well, Mr. Monroe," the jeweler said, when he was ushered into the banker's
office the following forenoon by the bank watchman, "I presume that bill is
a counterfeit of some kind?"
"My dear Belding," said the banker, who was a portly and jolly man, who
shook a good deal when he chuckled, and who shook now, "I thought you were
old enough, and experienced enough, to discover the counterfeit from the
real."
"My son took the bill in over the counter," said the jeweler, rather
chagrined.
"But haven't you examined it?" said Mr. Monroe, taking the strange
bank-note from a drawer of his desk.
"Well--yes," was the admission, made grudgingly.
"And are you not yet assured?"
"Neither one way nor the other," frankly confessed the jeweler. "It was
taken by Chet for a hundred-dollar bill. And it is that on one side!"
"It certainly looks to be," chuckled Mr. Monroe.
"But who ever heard of such a thing?" demanded the exasperated customer of
the bank. "A hundred printed on one side and a fifty on the other! The
printers of bank-notes do not make such mistakes."
"Hold on! Nobody is infallible in this world--not even a bank-note
printer," said the banker, reaching into another drawer and bringing forth
a large indexed scrapbook.
"Here's a case that happened some years ago. I am a scrapbook fiend,
Belding," chuckled Mr. Monroe. "There were once two bills issued for a
Kansas bank just like this one you have brought to me. Only this note that
we have here was printed for the Drovers' Levee Bank of Osage, Ohio, as you
can easily see. This note went through that bank, was signed by Bedford
Knox, cashier, and Peyton J. Weld, president, as you can see, and its
peculiar printing was not discovered.
"Ah, here we have it!" added Mr. Monroe, fluttering the stiff leaves of the
scrapbook and finally coming to the article in question. "Listen here: 'It
was found on communication with Washington that a record was held there of
the bill, and the department was anxious to recall it. With another bill it
had been printed for a bank in Kansas, and the mistake had been made by the
printer who had turned the sheet upside down in printing the reverse side.
The first plate bore the obverse of a fifty-dollar bill at the top and of a
hundred-dollar bill at the bottom, while the other plate held the reverse
of both sides. By turning the sheet around for the reverse printing, the
fifty-dollar impression had been made on the back of the hundred-dollar
bill.'
"Do you see, now?" laughed the banker. "Quite an easy and simple mistake,
and one that might often be made, only the printers are very careful men."
Oddly enough, Mr. Belding, although relieved by the probability that the
Department at Washington would make the strange bill right for him, was
suddenly attracted by another fact.
"I wonder," he said, "if that man came from Osage, Ohio?"
"What man? The one who passed the bank-note on your son?"
"Yes. You know, he was injured and is now in the hospital."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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