privilege of reducing the remainder of the debt by the payment of such sums as we should be able to raise at any time we wished. We were able to clear the mortgage in less than two years largely with money collected from our house notes.
I said that the money was collected largely from the house notes. The rest of it came from the issuing of gold bonds, two thousand dollars of which were really disposed of. The original intention was to sell five thousand dollars worth to launch our enterprise, but the brothers did not fall for the gold bonds with the enthusiasm that we had anticipated; it struck them as a good deal like putting good money into mining stock. In point of fact, the gold bond idea had the least in it of any of the bright thoughts which came to us in working up the house scheme. We have found these bonds harder to handle than any other indebtedness, and I feel that they were perhaps a mistake. Some of them have been given to the corporation, by the holders; now and then one has been paid when we had made some lucky collection and had the money; and the rest still remain to be cancelled as we prosper sufficiently to take them up.
With our lots paid for we felt that we were in a position to begin to build our house. There was only one trifling handicap that held us back, and
