Originally posted Tuesday, May 29, 2012
As the South Carolina House has passed a gold bill, currently due for consideration in its Senate, an historically colorful connection emerges.
One of Edgar Allen Poe’s most famous and influential stories, The Gold-Bug, was set on Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina.
“Gold Bug” is a familiar epithet for proponents of the gold standard.
(The William McKinley presidential campaign appropriated it as a theme used as a campaign lapel pin — much as the American colonial revolutionaries appropriated “Yankee Doodle” from an epithet used to ridicule them by the British.)
Poe’s story begins:
MANY years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan’s Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.
Poe describes the bug:
It was a beautiful scarabaeus, and, at that time, unknown to naturalists — of course a great prize in a scientific point of view. There were two round, black spots near one extremity of the back, and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard and glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold.
… which is to serve as a plumb weight in locating the buried treasure.
In its climactic scene:
We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an oblong chest of wood, which, from its perfect preservation, and wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing process — perhaps that of the Bi-chloride of Mercury. This box was three feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep. It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a kind of trellis-work over the whole. On each side of the chest, near the top, were three rings of iron — six in all — by means of which a firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united endeavors served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed. We at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight. Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding bolts. These we drew back — trembling and panting with anxiety. In an instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, a glow and a glare that absolutely dazzled our eyes.
Gold has been, for recorded history, and remains today, integral to human culture and human imagination. It is no more the property of any party or faction than is oxygen, is iconic, and uniquely well suited to the role of a neutral monetary base. Gold has integrity and has proven, over millenia, to hold value and create a strong, supple, framework for enterprise and for personal, national, and world prosperity.
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