The St. Johns herald., 1890-10-09
PRECIOUS GOLD DUST.
Kept in a Table Drawer at the Govern
 ment Printing Office.


 Seven thousand dollars worth of gold dust in table drawer! Poke your fingers into the yellow stuff and notice how soft and agreeable to the feeling it is, says the Washington Star, while the attendant in charge watches you care fully and sees that you do not get away with any of it. It is smooth to the ton ., because it is all composed of gold-beater's film rubbed to almost i'm palpable powder. For the same req son. too, it is absolutely pure and virgin metal. twenty-four carats fine.
 The drawer is in charge of a pretty young gir at the Government printing office. Her work there is to stamp gold lettering and ornamentation upon book covers. The precious substance comes to her in the shape of little rectangular sheets of foil inexpressibly thin, laid between layers of tissue paper made up in book form, each book holding tWen- ty-four gold sheets. Handling them is a matter requiring great skill, though you might not imagine it from casual inspection. To begin with, say the
 
 her an ordinary leather book cover. She takes from the little gold book a sheet of the foil, not with her fingers, but by catching it up with a small pad of raw cotton. Laying down the sheet of pure yellow gold upon @ little slab, she cuts it into three pieces with sharp knife. She makes it smooth by blow ing gently upon it with her breath. One of the pieces she applies to the back of the cover where the title is to go; another she also puts on the back, where the name of the author is to be, while the third biggest piece is spread over the middle of one flap of the cover, where an ornamental design is wanted.
 Next, after smoothing the piece of gold film down firmly on the leather, the pretty girl slides the cover beneath small press that stands on the table. In the press, face downward, is die en- graved in relief with the name of the book that is to be incased in the cover, the authors name and the ornamental design referred to. The die is kept heated by gas. A movement of lever worked by hand brings the die down upon the cover, and the raised lettering and design burn the gold foil wherever there is contact, so that it is made to adhere to the leather in those spots. The die is lifted, the cover is withdrawn from the press, and the gold is rubbed off with piece of soft leather on the end of a stick. Wherever the die has not touched it the film comes off read fly, leaving the lettering and the design adhering so closely to the leather that they could not be removed, save by hard scraping. Finally the young woman rubs the leather with chunk of burnt rubber, which takes off all undesirable particles, so that the ornamental pattern and the names of book and author shine out with beautiful clearness of outline in twentyfour carat gold. The whole process has taken good many words to describe, but it is actually performed very quickly, the covers being spread with gold, stamped with the heated die, and rubbed off in rapid succession. Each fresh sort of book-cover has to have a new die, of course.
 The operator is very careful in rub ping off the loose gold after each stamp ing, so as to lose none of it. As she uses the leather-tipped stick she permits the yellow stuff to fall through crack in the table top into the drawer beneath in the shape of dust, It is allowed to accumulate there until the drawer is full. The drawer is quite big and deep, and will hold S10,0O0 worth of the dust. You would not imagine it to be any very precious substance if you found a quan- tity of it in some odd place; it looks as much like powdered tinsel as any thing else. However, it is worth S20 an ounce, and when drawer full is collected the gold is forwarded to the mint in Phila delphia, which subjects it to assay and sends back check for it's value
 The burnt rubber used for the final polishing off of the gold lettering, etc., is simply India-rubber which has been subjected to a peculiar fire process that makes it very spongiose and absorbent. So remarkable is it's latter quality that 0 chunk of it as big as three of your fin gers will take up more than $15 worth of gold in it's pores. When, after some months of use such a piece of burnt rubber is loaded with all the gold it will comfortably carry, it is sent, with lot of others in the same condition, to the mint to be assayed.
 Real gold is only used in this way for particularly fine books. Designs and lettering of the sort for ordinary vol umes are done at the Government print ing office in nearly the same manner, but with yellow composition called 'German metal" which looks very much like the gold and is decidedly cheaper. No trouble is taken to save the wastage, and each booB-cover, after being stamped by the hot die, is simply put through brushing machine.
 The Electric Express Train.
 Dr. Louis Bell says the electric eX-