A little corner of Utah is soon traversed, and leaves no particular
impressions on the mind. By an early hour on Wednesday morning we
stopped to breakfast at Toano, a little station on a bleak, high-lying
plateau in Nevada. The man who kept the station eating-house was a Scot,
and learning that I was the same, he grew very friendly, and gave me
some advice on the country I was now entering. "You see," said he, "I
tell you this, because I come from your country." Hail, brither Scots!

His most important hint was on the moneys of this part of the world.
There is something in the simplicity of a decimal coinage which is
revolting to the human mind; thus the French, in small affairs, reckon
strictly by halfpence; and you have to solve, by a spasm of mental
arithmetic, such posers as thirty-two, forty-five, or even a hundred
halfpence. In the Pacific States they have made a bolder push for
complexity, and settle their affairs by a coin that no longer
exists--the _bit_, or old Mexican real. The supposed value of the bit is
twelve and a half cents, eight to the dollar. When it comes to two bits,
the quarter-dollar stands for the required amount. But how about an odd
bit? The nearest coin to it is a dime, which is short by a fifth. That,
then, is called a _short bit_. If you have one, you lay it triumphantly
down, and save two and a half cents. But if you have not, and lay down a
quarter, the bar-keeper or shopman calmly tenders you a dime by way of
change; and thus you have paid what is called a _long bit_, and lost two
and a half cents, or even, by comparison with a short bit, five cents.
In country places all over the Pacific coast, nothing lower than a bit
is ever asked or taken, which vastly increases the cost of life; as even
for a glass of beer you must pay fivepence or sevenpence-halfpenny, as
the case may be. You will say that this system of mutual robbery was as
broad as it was long; but I have discovered a plan to make it broader,
with which I here endow the public. It is brief and simple--radiantly
simple. There is one place where five cents are recognised, and that is
the post-office. A quarter is only worth two bits, a short and a long.
Whenever you have a quarter, go to the post office and buy five cents'
worth of postage-stamps; you will receive in change two dimes, that is,
two short bits. The purchasing power of your money is undiminished. You
can go and have your two glasses of beer all the same; and you hav