Daily Story
Counterfeit
“I think you are rather hard upon Mr.____. He reminds me of a man in Illinois, who was tried for passing a counterfeit bill. It was in evidence that before passing it he had taken it to the cashier of a bank and asked his opinion of the bill, and he received a very prompt reply that it was a counterfeit. His lawyer, who had heard of the evidence to be brought against his client, asked him, just before going into court, ‘Did you take the bill to the cashier of the bank and ask him if it was good?’ ‘I did,’ was the reply. ‘Well, what was the reply of the cashier?’ The rascal was in the corner, but he got out of it in this fashion: ‘He said it was a pretty tolerable, respectable sort of a bill.”
Francis Carpenter, Six Months at the White House, p. 262.