If only the Chancellor of the Exchequer would lend it to me for a week! * * * How much easier money is to make than to earn! The first stage in the life of a half-crown is a hot foundry where men melt down bars of silver in crucibles. These crucibles lie in gas furnaces that roar like hungry lions and give out a beautiful orange flame ending in a fringe of apple-green light. An overhead crane runs along, picks a red-hot crucible from the furnace, and carries it to a place where a series of long moulds are waiting. The silver is poured, spluttering and blazing, into these moulds, and the result is a number of long, narrow silver bars, which are passed through runners till the five-foot strip of silver is the exact thinness of a half-crown. These strips are then passed through machines which punch out silver discs with remarkable speed. The next machine gives these plain silver discs a raised edge, and the next--the machine worth having--puts the King's head on them, mills their edges, and turns them out into the world to tempt mankind. * * * While I was in the stamping-room of the Mint all the machines were working full blast, except one which looked like a rich relation and had become muscle bound. In one corner they were making East African shillings by the hundred thousand, in another they were turning out West African currency. The men had as much as they could do to keep pace with them. No sooner had they carried away a trough full of money, with the blasé air such an occupation induces, than a second pile was lying there on the floor like a miser's hoard. I saw enough African money made in half an hour to buy elephants, thousands of wives, guns, horses, buffaloes, and a throne or two. The raw material of a sultanate fell out on the floor of the Mint before luncheon-time. I could not, however, get worked up on African money. My first bucketful of sixpences gave me a much greater thrill. There must have been at least three thousand of them lying in bran. In the shilling department they were turning out a good line in high-class shillings, and the half-crown corner became positively thrilling. "Where's the gold?" I said, feeling slightly heady. "Ah, where?" replied my guide. "America?" I suggested. "Ah--um," he said reflectively. Leading from the stamping-rooms are rooms where silver is polished, but more interesting is the room in which its sound is tested. I have often heard money talk, but I had never heard it sing before. How it sings! Men sit at little tables picking up half-crowns and dashing them against a steel boss, with the result that the air is full of something quite like bird song; only much more interesting. It would surprise you to see how slight a defect disqualifies a coin. The smallest irregularity in its ring, and, flip! it is lying in the "rejected" basket. I half hoped they allowed staff and visitors to have these throw-outs at bargain prices; but there was nothing doing. * * *