If—”
“It’s Viennese, gnädige Frau. Custom, you see; that’s just it. We all do it; it’s Viennese.”
“But I’m not Viennese. And I can’t get reconciled to it. And your interruptions—why, it makes no difference: if I am planning with the cook, or commissioning a dienstman, or asking the postman about the trains, no matter, you break right in, uninvited, and take charge of the whole matter, and—”
“Ah, Jessus! it’s just as I was saying, and how true was the word! It’s Viennese—all over, Viennese. Custom, you see—all custom. Sorel Blgwrxczlzbzockowicz—she’s the Princess Tzwzfzhopowic’s maid—she says she always does so, and the Princess likes it, and—”
“But I am not the Princess, and I want things my way; can’t you understand a simple thing like that? And there’s another thing. Between the time that the three of us went to Vienna yesterday morning, and ten at night when we returned, you seem to have had your hands overfull. When the cook’s old grandfather came to see her, what did you meddle, for?”
Upon a certain occasion a quarrel arose among the Money in the banker’s strong-box, upon matters of right and privilege. It began between a Nickel and a Copper. In conversation the Nickel chanced to make a disparaging remark about the Copper, whereupon the latter spoke up with heat and said—
“I will have you to know that I am as good as you are.”
“Since when?” retorted the Nickel, with scorn.
“Since the Declaration of Independence said ‘all money is created free and equal.’ What do you say to that?”
“I say it is nothing but a form of speech, and isn’t true. You know quite well that in society I am more welcome than you are; that more deference is paid to me than to you, and that no one would grant that you are equal in rank to me.”
“Rank!” scoffed the Copper. “In a republic there is no such thing as rank. It is ignored by the highest authority in the land—the Constitution.”
“What of it? So is discrimination in the matter of color. But it is a dead letter, and you know it. You colored people belong in the kitchen, and we won’t allow you in the parlor, let the Constitution say what it will. You affect to repudiate rank, yet you have a rank of your own. One can pick you out in a crowd in the dark by the mere smell of it.”
“I beg your pardon,” responded the Copper coldly; “that is not rank, but merely rankness, which is a quite different thing.”
“Oh, call it by any name you prefer; to my mind the—”
“My friend,” interrupted an emaciated half dollar in a sickly voice, “really I must beg of you to modify your shout a little; you should leave your beer-hall style behind you when you push yourself up toward the upper circles of society.”
“Upper circles be damned!” exploded the Nickel, with beer-house ruggedness of speech; “I want you to understand that I’m as good as you, you poor disreputable ostracised bummer, going around everywhere letting on to be a person of means—brazenly pretending to be worth fifty cents when you can’t pay for six beers to save your life. I would like to know who will be putting on airs next. First it’s this mulatto here whose social intercourse is restricted to the peanut stand and the poor-box, and now it is you!—you who have ceased to be Money, and have gone down, down, down, until now you are nothing but a Commodity, like potatoes and guano.”
“It is true, I am temporarily in misfortune, yet I am nevertheless your superior in rank let the Declaration say what it will; and as I am in impaired health and the odor of stale beer is a damage to me, I shall be obliged if you will move a little further away and—”
“You also!” sniffed a Ten-Dollar Gold-Piece, with its handkerchief to its nose; “for from long usage as a tip you are foul with the noisome fragrance of greasy palms, and to a person of my rank and social condition nothing is more offensive than that.”
“I am as good as you are, dear sir, and I will not move.”
“Then I will.”
“Not at my expense if you please,” said a Hundred Dollar Bill, with asperity. “You are crowding me, and I will not have it. It passes my comprehension—the effrontery of this banker in subjecting me to the vulgar contact of all sorts of—”
“Now you are crowding me!” whimpered a Thousand Dollar Bond, “and I positively cannot have my snowy garments smirched by your—your—”
“Take that for your impudence!” cried the Hundred Dollar Bill, striking the Bond fairly in the face, and leaving a broad smirch of green ink there, “by the Declaration I am as good as you, and will prove it upon your body.” And straightway the fighting was taken up by the metal moneys and became general; and soon the furious jingling and jangling frightened away a team of arriving burglars and brought the police.
And so it came to pass that the court, and not the disputants, solved the question in dispute. In delivering judgment his Honor said as follows.
“The contention that you are all created free and equal is correct.
“But both here in America and in foreign lands the meaning of that phrase is curiously misunderstood. It does not propose to set aside the law of Nature—which is, that her children are created unequal, and of necessity must be. They are unequal in strength, health, stature, weight, comeliness, complexion, intellect, and so on. The Constitution cannot alter that and has not tried to. It only makes all equal in one way: it gives each an equal right with his neighbor to exercise his talent, whatever it may be, thus making free to all, many roads to profit and honor which were once arbitrarily restricted to the few.” He turned to a Copper and asked, “How much do you earn per year?”
“Five per cent, your Honor.”
“Nickel, how much do you earn?”
“Five per cent.”
“And you, Half Dollar?”
“Five per cent. That is, on what liars and slanderers are pleased to term my ‘actual’ value,” snapped out the Depreciated, with a white flash of anger, at the same time turning his back to hide his tears, which were beginning to drip down over his “In God We Trust”—for he was one of that over-confident early mintage.
“What do you earn, Gold-Piece?”
“Five per cent.”
“Hundred Dollar Bill?”
“Five per cent.”
“Thousand Dollar Bond?”
“Five per cent.”
“Very well. You perceive that you are all on a strictly dead level of equality; each gets the full market value of his talent, whether his talent is large or small; no advantage allowed any one of you on account of birth, station or quality. It is five per cent for all.
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