Pennies Again

At the end, at the end it comes down to pennies, so why not begin there?

Pennies as they used to be in England, fat wide copper coins, not these poor zinc shadows.

"A penny for luck," no, it wasn't one of these. These pennies have no luck. Somebody just clever enough to make bad decisions decided Americans wouldn't need luck any more: they had democracy. That would see them through. So now we have these scrawny, gasping, skint coins, barely big enough to print an ugly face on. Poor old Abraham Lincoln, one of the seven American presidents who had a soul. (Bad luck on him: good luck on us. It runs that way.)

Oh you'll see, you'll see what it costs in the long run, to decide you can dispense with luck.