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Show BEAUTY IN COINS. Everybody will concede that the $20 gold piece is the most beautiful coin in the United States. The thing itself may lack some of the lines of grace which make for beauty, but in the contemplation of the double eagle we unconsciously look beyond the coin itself and see what wonderful things can be got with the money. From the double, eagle, the most valuable coin of our country, down to the 'cent the coin of least value, is a big step, and it may be there. should be more attention paid to the aesthetic side of the cent piece in order to hide' its woful lack of purchasing power in a bower of beauty, as it were. The beauty of the cent piece should be' so great that admiration should be spontaneous for the coin, and not, as in the case of the $20 gold piece, lor me tnmgs that may be bought with it. It may be the government had something of this idea in view when it produced the new Lincoln cent Perhaps, too, when it made the new $20 gold piece that would not stack it was the desire to uplift the people ,n their tastes-to make them admire the com rather than its value and convenience The common people are not much put out by the failure of the twenties to stack; that is a pastime for tellers m banks. But in the pennies the common people are -tensely interested. They are the recognized means by winch the people are enabled to discharge their duty to the Sunday school (though just why we have pennies for God and dollars for everything t? T a rM " 3 Pr0Wem f0r cleren to solve), and the country is full of slot machines which a cent will compel to deliver up chewing gum, candy and other luxuries. The new pennies would no doubt continue to do their duty by the Sunday . school, but they are not the right size to fit the slot ! machines, and they will not work in the change ma-' chines at counting houses. In this day and age, when so little is thought of the pennies that banks do not split nickels, and a newspaper has to charge a nickel for itself because the people will not be bothered with the change, it is hard to tell what to do with the pennies if they won't operate the slot machines. Under such conditions, surely if the collectors col-lectors of nummary tokens had not placed a fictitious ficti-tious value on the 22,300,000 new copper coins, the I entire issue would have been swallowed up by the Sunday schools in a couple of weeks. |