least, on the first day of the first month," and fearing in time it might be forgotten which was the first month, added, " called January in each year, forever." This is what goes by the name of a Phila delphia ground-rent. No one can appreci ate what a convenient arrangement it is until he has bought and paid for a house in Philadelphia, and is aroused, early New Year's morning or some other morning, with the imperative demand that it must be paid for again, forever. The fault in the present instance was Dick Roe's, and his love for an eternal stream of Spanish dollars; and some fool who was willing to gratify that love. What joy entered the soul of Dick Roe, April 30, 1793, the day he delivered his deed for that lot with its carefully worded reservation! Ah, the little Roes should never want, for he had still other lots to sell on the same conditions. The present might become the past, the future come to an end, and the millennium dawn, yet that eternal Spanish dollar reservation would go on for ever. The annual stream of Spanish dollars would never cease, even though the Roes might. Congress previous to this had enacted that " Spanish milled dollars " of " seventeen pennyweights and seven grains " were " a legal tender for all debts and demands ... at the rate of one hundred cents for each dol lar." Why Roe should be willing to receive dollars of one grain less weight can only be explained on the theory that these dol lars were so fascinating that he was willing to receive even the old and decrepit dollars, the punched and plugged dollars, the babybitten dollars, only so that they were the Spanish milled dollars. A combination was formed against that Spanish dollar reservation. The little Roes pooled their issues, sealskin sacks for the misses, and ball and bats and shot-guns for the boys. Dick Roe sadly scratched a few more hairs out of his head over this prob lem. At last he solved it by taking his loved reserved ground-rent of those ever
lasting flowing Spanish dollars unto the money-lender and selling it unto him. Years passed; the ground-rent in that time changing ownership many times, as well as the title to the lot of ground. But as often as the change took place, " on the first day of the first month, called January in each year," Mr. Lot-owner would come unto Mr. Ground-rent and pay him his ninety-five and one third dollars; and as other dollars became just as valuable as those nice Spanish milled dollars of seven teen pennyweights and six grains at least, Mr. Ground-rent would condescendingly take whatever kind of good dollars Mr. Lotowner might have. Disaster lay in wait for the Spanish dol lar. The coinage of the Spanish dollar ceased. It was not because the world had too many of them, but Spain wanted a new deal on the money question; she entirely changed her system of currency, and adopted a system in which there was no coin known as a dollar, and no coin which was the exact equivalent of that Spanish milled dollar. Again the Spanish dollar proved the truth of that saying that misfortunes never come singly. In 1857 the United States govern ment sat down upon it by passing an act to demonetize the Spanish dollar. In other words, it was no longer a dollar of one hun dred cents to pay a debt of one hundred cents. It had become a dollar of one hundred cents only in name. The reason of this is that it came under the rule that when the government or the law says a piece of silver is a dollar to pay a debt of one hundred cents with, then that silver piece is a dollar, whether it has or has not one hundred cents of silver in it. But when it says that that same piece is not a dollar to pay a debt of one hundred cents, then that thing is only worth its weight at the market value of silver. After this the Spanish milled dollar kept going from bad to worse until in late years it is worth from about seventy-two cents to eighty-five cents in current money of the
