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.
* * *
In other rooms men crouched over a revolving hand covered with money, picking out any badly coloured coin as the constant stream advanced towards them. The next department was a mechanical weighing-room, in which wise-looking machines in glass cases put true coins in one slot, light ones in a second, and heavy-weights in a third.
As a climax I saw a giant machine that counts half-crowns into one hundred pound bags and never makes a mistake. I watched it count forty bagsful and then walked thoughtfully away.
* * *
"What does it feel like to make money all day long and draw a few pounds on Friday?" I asked a Mint worker.
"Oh, I dunno," he replied as he shook a thousand pounds through a bran sieve. This is a merciful frame of mind.