The guide says, "If there's a bit of sand left in the paste, why then the grinding hasn't been done right." The rollers are of strong steel, and the smallest substance would be ground under them. A grain of sand will cause the two rollers as they meet to recede from each other, so sensitive are they to the finest hard substance.
Now we are out in a court again and we can see the engine room, and the huge coal fires burning, and the big boiler sweltering and steaming away at a great rate. The man who attends the engine is in his shirt-sleeves, and a little blackened, and I believe that, not excepting the Beadle, this was the only man whom I saw inside of the Bank who was not in full dress.
Here is a large room where the Bank-paper is cut to the proper size for notes, and a thousand pound note is exactly the same size as one for five pounds, which is the smallest denomination issued by the Bank.
Then there is the room for the compositors and binders, and in the latter apartment, all the account books which the vast business of the Bank make necessary, are paged, lined, and bound. Of ledgers alone, one thousand are used yearly, in this fountain head of finance, and check books innumerable are also printed and bound here.
Now I am again in the court-yard, which is paved very neatly—but no, I have not been here before. This fact I recognize as I look around me. This another court-yard.
"This is the Library, Sir," said the guide.
I began to think that the Bank officials were indeed a very literary set of people, who could find time in business hours to read books, but I was presently made aware of my mistake.
The guide knocks quietly at a small iron door, which revolves on its hinges with a noise, and a man in that same inevitable dress-coat, cravat, and neck-tie, opens the door, and I gain an entrance to a place which looks to me very like the casemate of a Monitor, or a sally-port in a stone fortress. Iron doors, iron hinges, and iron windows, shaped in a circular form, and embayed in the wall, are the most significant signs around me.
Although it is broad daylight outside, there is utter darkness within, but for the single gas jet which burns as if suffering from some defect in the pipe.