I am a ten-dollar Treasury note, series of 1901.  You may have seen one in a friend’s hand.  On my face, in the centre, is a picture of the bison Americanus, miscalled a buffalo by fifty or sixty millions of Americans.  The heads of Capt.  Lewis and Capt.  Clark adorn the ends.  On my back is the graceful figure of Liberty or Ceres or Maxine Elliot standing in the centre of the stage on a conservatory plant.  My references is—­or are—­Section 3,588, Revised Statutes.  Ten cold, hard dollars—­I don’t say whether silver, gold, lead or iron—­Uncle Sam will hand you over his counter if you want to cash me in.

I beg you will excuse any conversational breaks that I make—­thanks, I knew you would—­got that sneaking little respect and agreeable feeling toward even an X, haven’t you?  You see, a tainted bill doesn’t have much chance to acquire a correct form of expression.  I never knew a really cultured and educated person that could afford to hold a ten-spot any longer than it would take to do an Arthur Duffy to the nearest That’s All! sign or delicatessen store.

For a six-year-old, I’ve had a lively and gorgeous circulation.  I guess I’ve paid as many debts as the man who dies.  I’ve been owned by a good many kinds of people.  But a little old ragged, damp, dingy five-dollar silver certificate gave me a jar one day.  I was next to it in the fat and bad-smelling purse of a butcher.

“Hey, you Sitting Bull,” says I, “don’t scrouge so.  Anyhow, don’t you think it’s about time you went in on a customs payment and got reissued?  For a series of 1899 you’re a sight.”

“Oh, don’t get crackly just because you’re a Buffalo bill,” says the fiver.  “You’d be limp, too, if you’d been stuffed down in a thick cotton-and-lisle-thread under an elastic all day, and the thermometer not a degree under 85 in the store.”

“I never heard of a pocketbook like that,” says I.  “Who carried you?”

“A shopgirl,” says the five-spot.

“What’s that?” I had to ask.

“You’ll never know till their millennium comes,” says the fiver.

Just then a two-dollar bill behind me with a George Washington head, spoke up to the fiver: 

“Aw, cut out yer kicks.  Ain’t lisle thread good enough for yer?  If you was under all cotton like I’ve been to-day, and choked up with factory dust till the lady with the cornucopia on me sneezed half a dozen times, you’d have some reason to complain.”

That was the next day after I arrived in New York.  I came in a $500 package of tens to a Brooklyn bank from one of its Pennsylvania correspondents—­and I haven’t made the acquaintance of any of the five and two spot’s friends’ pocketbooks yet.  Silk for mine, every time.