So I had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself
for the king's-evil. I covered six-sevenths of the appropriation
into the treasury a week before starting from Camelot on my
adventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated into
five-cent nickels and delivered into the hands of the head clerk
of the King's Evil Department; a nickel to take the place of each
gold coin, you see, and do its work for it. It might strain the
nickel some, but I judged it could stand it. As a rule, I do not
approve of watering stock, but I considered it square enough
in this case, for it was just a gift, anyway. Of course, you can
water a gift as much as you want to; and I generally do. The old
gold and silver coins of the country were of ancient and unknown
origin, as a rule, but some of them were Roman; they were ill-shapen,
and seldom rounder than a moon that is a week past the full; they
were hammered, not minted, and they were so worn with use that
the devices upon them were as illegible as blisters, and looked
like them. I judged that a sharp, bright new nickel, with a
first-rate likeness of the king on one side of it and Guenever
on the other, and a blooming pious motto, would take the tuck out
of scrofula as handy as a nobler coin and please the scrofulous
fancy more; and I was right. This batch was the first it was
tried on, and it worked to a charm.
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