"_Rather_ make money, my dear sir! Pray, may I ask what Satanstoe was valued at, when you got it from my grandfather?" "Pretty well up, Hugh; for it was, and indeed _is_, a first-rate farm. Including sedges and salt-meadows, you will remember that there are quite five hundred acres of it, altogether." "Which you inherited in 1829?" "Of course; that was the year of my father's death. Why, the place was thought to be worth about thirty thousand dollars at that time; but land was rather low in Westchester in 1829." "And you sold two hundred acres, including the point, the harbour, and a good deal of the sedges, for the moderate modicum of one hundred and ten thousand, cash. A tolerable sale, sir!" "No, not cash. I got only eighty thousand down, while thirty thousand were secured by mortgage." "Which mortgage you hold yet, I dare say, if the truth were told, covering the whole city of Dibbletonborough. A city ought to be good security for thirty thousand dollars?" "It is not, nevertheless, in this case. The speculators who bought of me in 1835 laid out their town, built a hotel, a wharf, and a warehouse, and then had an auction. They sold four hundred lots, each twenty-five feet by a hundred, regulation size, you see, at an average of two hundred and fifty dollars, receiving one-half, or fifty thousand dollars, down, and leaving the balance on mortgage. Soon after this, the bubble burst, and the best lot at Dibbletonborough would not bring, under the hammer, twenty dollars. The hotel and the warehouse stand alone in their glory, and will thus stand until they fall, which will not be a thousand years hence, I rather think." "And what is the condition of the town-plot?" "Bad enough. The landmarks are disappearing; and it would cost any man who should attempt it, the value of his lot, to hire a surveyor to find his twenty-five by a hundred." "But your mortgage is good?" "Ay, good in one sense; but it would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer to foreclose it. Why, the equitable interests in that town-plot, people the place of themselves. I ordered my agent to commence buying up the rights, as the shortest process of getting rid of them; and he told me in the very last letter I received, that he had succeeded in purchasing the titles to three hundred and seventeen of the lots, at an average price of ten dollars. The remainder, I suppose, will have to be absorbed." "Absorbed! That is a process I never heard of, as applied to land." "There is a good deal of it done, notwithstanding, in America. It is merely including within your own possession, adjacent land for which no claimant appears. What can I do? No owners are to be found; and then my mortgage is always a title. A possession of twenty years under a mortgage is as good as a deed in fee-simple, with full covenants of warranty, barring minors and _femmes covert_." "You did better by Lilacsbush?"