A 100-Year Promise (Picture Frame Not Included)

Not long ago, I paid $25 at an antiques store to buy an old $1,000 bond that now hangs, framed, in our office in Scarsdale, N.Y. The beautifully engraved bond was issued by the Lehigh Valley Terminal Railway Company, a newly organized subsidiary of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, on Oct. 1, 1891. It recites that the railroad “acknowledges itself indebted to the bearer hereof in the sum of One Thousand …