investors shall be willing to loan money upon the security of leaseholds, may be mentioned the careful watching of the mortgagor's payments of rents, taxes, etc., lest dispossess proceedings or sales for taxes may involve investors in serious difficulties; the obtaining of the consent of the landlords to the mortgage transactions, and agreements on the parts of the landlords to notify the mortgagees of any defaults on the parts of the tenants; and a proper care in the identification of the mortgagors as tenants who shall have the legal right to mortgage the leaseholds.

Among certain large and active investors, the loaning of money upon first-class leaseholds is regarded as safe and desirable; according to credible reports, single mortgages to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars have been placed in this manner in the city of New York.

For such reasons, and because of their peculiar position among mortgages upon personal property, it has been deemed proper that mortgages upon leasehold securities should be explained, in somewhat of detail, in this work. But, with all the precautions which may be suggested, and with all the talents of judgment which, even in exceptional cases, may be exercised, it must not be doubted that the complications and difficulties which will surely be involved in transactions of this kind ought to place them beyond the consideration of truly careful investors. And if the difficulties which have been suggested shall not be sufficient to remove such loans from the lists of possible investments, a recourse to the general rules of investment, which have so often received our consideration, will not fail to determine the exact position of such transactions in the broad field of investment. Thus leasehold mortgages will not, strictly speaking, furnish real and ample securities, for the securities may be practically destroyed by fire and the failure of insurance companies, and the values of the securities will be in most cases too uncertain to be ample. Nor, strictly speaking, will the securities be within the control of the investors; for the ultimate securities (the lands) cannot be reduced to the possession of the inves

Indeed, the direct securities (the buildings and leases)

cannot be reduced to the possession of the investors except by assuming the duties of paying the ground-rents and of performing, for the tenants, the remaining covenants between owners of the lands and the tenants.

In concluding the discussion of the subject of mortgages, it must be remarked that, search and investigate as diligently as we may, no form of loan-investment which, in points of safety, simplicity, certainty of income, and freedom from the demands of an arduous and irksome vigilance, will be found to be equal to loans which are secured by satisfactory bonds and mortgages upon real estate will be found. And further, it may be said that investors who, stemming the current of modern popular tendency towards supposed newly discovered methods, and casting quickly to one side the temptations and the fascinations of glib promoters, who claim to have opened the impossible royal road to fortune, shall confine their loan-investments steadily to mortgages upon real estate, will not fail to reap the substantial benefits which are to be obtained only by a manner of proceeding which shall be at once uniform, systematic, judicious, and cautious.

BY

CHAPTER IX

REAL PROPERTY

Y the term real property, or, in the common, although technically improper, language of the masses, real estate, we mean land and that which is attached to it - in short, and with sufficient accuracy for the purposes of this work, land and buildings.

Among all tangible things to which the human being may bear a definite relationship, foremost in importance must be regarded land,- the substantial, unchangeable portions of the earth, the soil. Upon it our infant footsteps rest; from the earliest infancy to the last hours of infirmity and old age it furnishes us with food, clothing, and shelter, unfailingly and bounteously; and at last it provides for us a gentle resting-place within its generous bosom.

In the ages which have passed, the scourges of war, pestilence, fire, famine, and flood have passed over the earth. Humanity has withered and disappeared before these fearful ravages. The mightiest and most substantial works of man have been obliterated, leaving scarcely traces behind them. Cities, empires, and races of people have been buried in oblivion. But the solid land-the soil-remains, humanity's perfect ideal of that which is immovable, indestructible, imperishable.

Small wonder, then, that, of all possible earthly possessions which men unceasingly strive for and hold dear, land only is called by them real property. And therefore, also, it is that individual ownership of land, for which the accumulated wisdom of centuries has found it necessary to provide

the means and the protection, is, above all other kinds and descriptions of actual possessions, greatly to be desired.

The human being is definitely located and identified by his possession of land. And further, man is impelled to good citizenship, to patriotism, to integrity, to love, to devotion, and to inestimable happiness by his sense of supreme security in the land upon which rests his own home-that dearest of all places," whence he will not depart, if nothing calls him away; whence, if he has departed, he seems to be a wanderer, and, if he returns, he ceases to wander."

Reflections such as these should bring forcibly to the mind the surpassing importance of the laws which establish and maintain the citizen's sure title to his land. Indeed, it is for reasons of no ordinary consequence that, in the mothercountry, from which we of America have derived the blessings of the common law, the inviolable title-deeds to the land have long been known as the "common assurances of England."

There must be no wavering, no questioning, no theorizing with respect to these vitally important facts. The proposition, instantly and universally accepted, must be simply this given a title to land, honestly acquired and lawfully employed,—and that title must be sacred,—the citizen must stake his life in its defence. For of what use is government if the honest citizen shall not know what real property is his What shall signify the flag which floats only over government possessions? Of what benefit are armies and navies, if there shall be no homes?

And so, all sorts of community plans, all theories of anarchy, socialism, and the like, and all schemes for a special distribution of land, or for special methods for the taxation of land, must be promptly put down at any cost. They are, one and all, essentially portentous, and must be allowed no consideration, no liberty, not even life.

That nation is surely perishing wherein these forces of lawlessness and disorder, all combined, may assail, except with certain futility, even the most insignificant of land titles-wherein they are able, for a single moment, to shake

the mountain wood-chopper's just title to his little rocky home, or the fisherman's honest claim to his cabin and his bit of ocean sand.

There are many different kinds of interests in lands, some simple, others intricate and difficult to understand. It appears to be entirely unnecessary that all such interests shall be explained in a work of this description; but it will be beneficial to define, simply and briefly, the common kinds of ownership, or partial ownership, of land with which the business woman ought to be familiar.

The word "estate," as applied to land, properly means interest or kind of ownership. We therefore speak of a tenant's interest in the leased land as a leasehold estate, and of an ownership of land for life as a life estate.

The greatest estate which may be had in land is an absolute ownership, or such an ownership that the land may be sold or devised by will, or will pass to the heirs by inheritSuch an estate, in England, where there are other estates to distinguish, is called an estate in fee simple, or in fee simple absolute, and in the United States generally an estate in fee, or an absolute estate.

ance.

The second greatest estate in land is an estate for life; that is, an ownership of land which a person may have during his or her lifetime, the land, after the death of the owner for life (or tenant for life), to pass to other persons. The estate of the last mentioned persons is called an estate in remainder, because it is the part which remains of the absolute estate, after taking out the estate for life. The common forms of estates for life are the estate in dower, which is the life estate which a widow has in one third of the real property owned by her husband at the time of his death; the estate by curtesy, which is the life estate which a husband has in all the real property owned by his wife at the time of her death, provided the wife shall not have devised the land by will, and provided a child shall have been born alive to the husband and wife; and an estate for life, which comes to a person, not by act of the law (as dower or curtesy), but by deed or by will.