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FINANCIAL A few years ago when, there was "money to burn" a neat financial trick was extensively played. In order to allay whatever little hesitation about burning their money some people might have a "guarantee" was given them that they could get their money back after they had burned it. This trick was especially efficient in the matter of western mortgages. Companies with gilt-edged names and gilt-edged directors made their appearance prepared to guarantee all creation If they were asked to. And between them they did guarantee most of the part of creation west of the Mississippi river in the United States of America. This generous and self-sacrificing action was greatly appreciated by thousands who had not taken the thirty-third degree in human nature and who had not lost faith in the ability of a company to do anything that its advertisements and its agents might say it could do. But alas for the hopes of men. It became plain after awhile that a "guarantee" when tested must have something to sustain it except wind. So there has been great trouble and loss. and though "doubtless the pleasure is as great of being cheated as to cheat," it will be some months before those who have been allowed to discover what a guarantee really is will want any more of the kind of pleasure they have found in the process. The pleasures and the usefulness of the guarantee are called to mind by an auction sale which took place in New York the other day. It was a sale of mortgages on properties in nine southern and eight northwestern and Pacific coast States, and somewhat more than $3,000,000 were realized, which was about 65 per cent. of their par value. There were 3,200 mortgages, and 175 parcels of land that had been obtained by foreclosures, sold. The loans on these properties had been made by the Equitable Mortgage company of Kansas, which had turned off all these mortgages to the American Loan and Trust company to secure the payment fo its debenture bonds. In 1890 the latter company failed, and the Supreme court of New York transferred the trusteeship to the New York Security and Trust company. In September, 1893, the Equitable Mortgage company failed, and its affairs were turned over to receivers. The debenture holders then called upon the New York Security company to sell those securities and in compliance with that demand the sale was ordered. So the holders of these debenture bonds may in the end get half the money they put into them back. And this will make them feel twice as well as they once expected to.