Legend has it Lincoln walked for miles to return a couple pennies he overcharged a customer.
He would have been a young clerk in New Salem, tall but without the beard we see in profile on all
those pennies sitting in saucers next to cash registers waiting for those of us who like change that
makes sense. How could he guess a nation would put his portrait on a coin only to phase it out
as of no value when credit became the faceless coin of the realm? Some banks now
are running short of pennies—past their prime, we hear, too costly, a drop in the bucket of business.
But look at them, the word liberty hovers over Lincoln’s shoulder like one of his better angels and all
we can do is wave good-by as the fate of so much else we take for granted seems as uncertain
as a coin toss. So when the last penny is melted down and Lincoln no longer lives
in our pockets and piggy banks we will have to live with a deficit on the balance sheet of who we are
and the kind, ever-present portrait, facing resolutely forward, will be lost beneath the dark cushion of time.