A tale of two banks

In New York it was a big bank, Citibank, that told customers with accounts of less than $5,000 they had to stand in line for teller machines instead of for living, breathing tellers. In Easton, Massachusetts, it was a small bank, run by schoolchildren, that became very successful with all-human tellers.

Last week, as national network viewers saw, some evidently sobersided bank examiners went to Easton and closed down the kids for operating without a charter.

Soon the Massachusetts banking commissioner was reported to be thinking of creating a branch bank in Easton as a kind of atonement for his men: ''Maybe their style was a little less than it should have been.''

But no one seems to be atoning for relegating those no-accounter, low-account - New Yorkers to mere machines at Citibank, which is still in operation.