"I contend," said he, "that the very weight of small coin, of which you seem so proud, is one of the things that hang to the rim of the world and keep it in check. Human-kind is laboring to-day under a burden of fractional silver that is as overpowering as the copper currency of the past. I contend that heavy money, like heavy bread, is killing to the imagination; and without imagination there is no progress. What inspiration is there in a cold, white coin stamped with the smug features of some fat-natured prince? Is it a thing to lift a man out of the ruck? It is not. Never has the possession of a piece of coined silver caused a man to raise his head and think a thought above his fellows; the sight of such a coin has never made a slave to rebel against his master; a till full of them has yet to make a merchant feel in a fair way of business."
"Enough of them can always be exchanged for others of a higher value," argued the comfortable man.
This fact seemed to inspire the other to increased resentment.
"It should not be," he declared. "There is never a time that I lay out a gold piece and get a pallid collection of silver bits in exchange that I don't feel I've been robbed. I have no grudge against silver as a metal, mark you; for as such it has its uses. It is only when you put a stamp upon disks of it and tell me it's money that I rise up against you. For then it's a cheat; it's a cold unencouraging thing; and for all its pretense it's not quick; the only life it has is that given it by the efforts of men like you."
"Might not the same be said of gold?" asked the other man.
"Never," said he of the hook-nose, positively. "Impossible. For gold, sir, possesses something more than the natural chemistry of its composition. And, in spite of the general belief, learned men of other years did not give their minds to transmuting the duller metals only because of the profit it might bring them."
"What, then, was it?" asked the comfortable man.
"If the truth were known," said the other, "we'd find that they sought for a life principle which nature had hidden from us, and which gold possesses. It is a thing which the eye can see and the hand touch, but for which we have not a proper understanding."
"Ah!" said the comfortable man tolerantly. "You give a kind of magic to it."
"I do not," denied the man with the hook-nose. "To prove to yourself that there's rare virtue in gold, you have only to note its effect upon dulled, whipped, and joyless things. Put a piece of it into the pocket of a poor man, and it at once begins to warm him; his eyes see things not visible before; his mind dreams dreams. Many a man has crept, shabby and ashamed, before the face of day; and the touch of gold has brought his eyes to a level, and put some of that curl into his lip that makes life possible."