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Show Real Artistic Merit in American Gold Coinage first as "God Our Trust." Saint-Gaudens' Saint-Gaudens' coin had to be flattened out after the first issue because it didn't stack up well, but the design has been used ever since, with "In God We Trust'' put back almost immediately. immedi-ately. We are the only large nation today that uses any religious reference refer-ence on its coins, but in early times the French used "Blessed be the name of the Lord" (in Latin) and later in French, "God Protect France." The first gold coins issued by the infant United States, writes Gwendoline Gwendo-line Keene in the Boston Transcript, came in 1705, from the Philadelphia mint, still our leading one. There were eagle and half-eagles ?10 and $5. Double eagles are the highest the government has ever gone, except ex-cept when we celebrated the Panama-Pacific exposition with a .?50 piece. The ones minted until just now were from quarter-eagles to doubles, but we have minted dollars, $3 and 54 (very rare). We started right In with the head of Liberty and an eagle. In the beginning she was a rather countrified looking lass, and the eagle was a bit scrawny, but he soon swelled out to heraldic size and the lady took on more poise. They changed very little in the next 100 years. It was the days of the Forty-niners that brought in the novelties. Tiring of gold dust exchange, individuals in San Francisco, Denver, Suit Lake City and other centers, melted up the gold dust, with enough alloy to keep it together and put out gold coins. Some of these were very fine copies of the government Issues, distinguishable distin-guishable only by the name of the issuer, so small that sometimes It fitted in Liberty's coronet. Others were frankly original, such as one of the $50 slugs of 1S51 issued by Augustus Humbert in California. It is eight-sided and easily dented because be-cause of its considerable weight. You hold it, as you should hold all rare coins, gingerly, in thumb and linger, by the edge. By 1907 we were getting artistic, and that year the beautiful double-eagle double-eagle of Augustus Saint-Gaudens was minted along with new designs for the three other gold pieces. As first struck, the Saint-Gaudens was in quite high relief, because the face was distinctly concave. It has a full-length full-length Liberty striding forward and an eagle in full flight, but it "nearly raised the roof," says Mr. Pond, secretary sec-retary of the Boston Numismatic society, because it left off "In God We Trust." This had been on since Civil war days when a clergyman wrote to the secretary of the treasury treas-ury calling his attention to the fact that "recognition of our dependence upon Almighty God has been overlooked over-looked on our currency." It came out |