The Jungle

What did Jokubas Szedvilas tell the family about buying a house?

chapter 3 -4

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Jokubas told them that the contract they were signing wasn't to piurchase the house but to rent it. He was very suspicious over the entire affair, but the family signed anyway. 

Yet Jokubas Szedvilas read on and on; and presently there developed that he had good reason for doing so. For a horrible suspicion had begun dawning in his mind; he knitted his brows more and more as he read. This was not a deed of sale at all, so far as he could see—it provided only for the renting of the property! It was hard to tell, with all this strange legal jargon, words he had never heard before; but was not this plain—"the party of the first part hereby covenants and agrees to rent to the said party of the second part!" And then again—"a monthly rental of twelve dollars, for a period of eight years and four months!" Then Szedvilas took off his spectacles, and looked at the agent, and stammered a question.

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The Jungle