328 HOW TO GET A FARM, 



landed property has something to do with it. A man who 

 has a mortgage may find some fraudulent evasion of it, 

 some sale for taxes which has destroyed his title. Or by 

 the death of the proprietor lawsuits may be brought that 

 will nearly swallow up the value of the mortgage in secur 

 ing the claim, so that it has become an invariable rule 

 among capitalists not to invest even on mortgage where the 

 property is so far oif that the man interested cannot look 

 after it himself. But land, if you start with a clear title, 

 and pay the taxes, and are loyal and quiet, is safe, and rises 

 with all the improvement of society, to fall only with its 

 decay. 



&quot; But the real and most fundamental reason for the extra 

 value attached to land, it appears to us, is, that however 

 narrow its dimensions, the possession of every acre involves 

 rights, the extent of which is literally unbounded. Stakes 

 may be driven at the four corners of a lot, and the lines 

 marked out and fenced in, north, south, east, and west. 

 But there are at least two sides on which it has no bounds, 

 the height above and the depth below. No one knows the 

 values that are or may be connected with those unlimited 

 sides of every man s farm. * Build high, was a saying of 

 Stephen Girard, there is no ground rent above. No one 

 knows what commercial value may some day attach to a 

 good situation for drawing in unlimited supplies of oxygen 

 or nitrogen. The fresh air or the beautiful prospect even 

 now give their greatest real value to many a building-lot of 

 land, for the eye has an empire of its own. It can stretch 

 far and wide, and from the proper stand-point connects the 

 possessor of land with realms and a domain stretching out 

 beyond the farthest star into absolute infinity. Some day 

 we may navigate the air, at least the lower regions of it, 

 and what may be the value of those rights, now only used 

 J&amp;gt;y the tree tops and the birds, who shall say? The 



