any increase, having pointed out to him that we had very recently been running at only half time, etc. I was rather surprised to finally get him to agree to an advance in the rental of only $400.00 making it $3,900, and thereupon I asked for a pen and paper to draw a short agreement in duplicate, that we each might sign. The agreement which I drew, as I later found, opened up a point of law with which I was not familiar, the agreement recited that:

The party of the first part (Guetal) hereby agrees to lease William e. Uptegrove, & c.

And then followed a description of the property, We each signed, and I pocketed my copy with great inward satisfaction, which I am sure, however was not made evident to Guetal. It was verbally understood between us that he would have the lease drawn in full, when he would notify me, and we would execute it at his office. Instead of that, I received a letter from him a week later, stating that after deliberating further he decided that he could not rent the mill at such a low figure. This was rather a chock to me, and I lost no time in taking the written agreement and his letter to my lawyer, Thomas H. Rodman, who was a nephew of one of my employers, and a very able lawyer he was. Lawyer Rodman smiled as he handed the agreement back to me, and said "You cannot hold the mill on that agreement ," and that was another shock to me. I asked him, "What is it good for, then?" "Why", he said, you can bring suit for damages for default of the contract." I replied that I did not want "damages". "I want the mill and you tell me I cannot hold him". He replied: "Well, I am only telling you the law on the subject and you will have to get a lease.". "But", said I, "I cannot sit in that man's office by the hour and draw a voluminous lease with all the recitals and have him sign it then and there."

I soon realized that it was my problem to utilize the legal information I had obtained and work out my own salvation. I stepped out of his office, 59 Liberty Street, and walked up Nassau Street to take the street car back to my office, and, in passing a stationery store there was a sign out "LAW BLANKS", I went in and bought two blank copies of a lease, and as I sat down in the car for the thirty minutes ride to my office a plan had fully developed in my mind, and I took one of those blank Leases out of my pocket and proceeded to memorize the legal verbage, which read something like this: