Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/155

 were swallowed up in the grand new alignments, the trust bought them out upon the terms above stated. All such purchases, with the various reconstructions raised upon them, were held by the trust, until the price obtainable repaid all costs. They were usually leased meanwhile for long terms, with option of purchase to lessee at the required amount—a mode which mostly led, comparatively early, to a final settlement in the way intended.

We halt a moment to glance at a rather striking episode of the business. The original estimate that about one-third of a century would accomplish all this reimbursement seemed in fair way of proving correct, had it not been that an additional object had come into view on the road, so as to protract further the final settlement. This was no less than the proposed concurrent extinction of the large city debt, contracted mainly by the preceding Board of Works. Indeed, the municipal corporation—now a large and important body, having jurisdiction over the entire metropolis—impressed, through the approaching evident success of the trust, with the magical effect of mere lapse of time, had early put in a word for itself and its many expenses. The hope of being grafted on, in some permanent way, to even some small fragment of the trust, was enough, for the moment, to arouse visions of boundless and yet costless hospitalities. The Government, however, answering for the trust in this particular contingency, firmly, and even sternly, repelled all wooing of favour in that direction. But