“It never can be like that, surely.”
“There is no knowing; probably not. But it is a question of degree. When you have your hay-crop here very plentiful, don’t you find that hay becomes cheap?”
“That’s of course.”
“And gold becomes cheap. You just think it over, and you’ll find how it is. When hay is plentiful, you can’t get so much for a load because it becomes cheap. But you can feed more cows, and altogether you know that such plenty is a blessing. So it is with gold. When it is plentiful, you can’t get so much meat for it as you used to do; but, as you can get the gold much easier, it will come to the same thing,—if you will swim with the stream, as your friend in Innsbruck counselled you.”
Then the Frau again considered, and again found that she could not accept this doctrine as bearing upon her own case. “I don’t think it can be like that here, sir,” she said.
“Why not here as well as elsewhere?”
“Because we never see a bit of gold from one year’s end to the other. Barns full of it! Why, it’s so precious that you English people, and the French, and the Americans always change it for paper before you come here. If you mean that it is because bank-notes are so common——”
Then Mr. Cartwright scratched his head, feeling that there would be a difficulty in making the Frau understand the increased use of an article which, common as it had become in the great marts of the world, had not as yet made its way into her valley. “It is because bank-notes are less common.” The Frau gazed at him steadfastly, trying to understand something about it. “You still use bank-notes at Innsbruck?”
“Nothing else,” she said. “There is a little silver among the shops, but you never see a bit of gold.”