not alter property rights, even in favor of innocent purchasers, when the owner did not intend to part therewith.  A moment’s recollection of what is now perhaps the most familiar of Teutonic saga to the ordinary reader, the text of Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelung,” will give ample evidence of that mental attitude.  But the Oriental mind was far more subtile.  To the Jews or Lombards we owe the discovery of that bill of exchange—­the first of negotiable instruments, and the first historically to bring into our law the legal concept of a symbol of ownership which might be instantly transferred with an absolute change of title in the property thereby represented, and this either to a present transferee or to one far away.  Thus, a simple bill of exchange might transfer the ownership in a pile of gold in a moment from a man in Venice to a man in London, thereby (if the law-merchant was respected) freeing the treasure itself from attack at the hands of the Venetian authorities.  And not only was this change of ownership instantaneously effected by the transfer of some symbol or document representing it, but there also, and as a necessary part of the invention, grew up the doctrine that the transferee was relieved of any claims against the property at the hands of the previous owner.  This is what we mean by negotiable; and it is essential that the precise meaning of the word should be understood if we are to understand the importance of this legislation.  Even most business men have a very vague understanding of the difference between negotiable and assignable.  Substantially all property and choses in action are assignable, except personal contracts; and in ordinary business many of them are assumed to be negotiable, such as bills of lading, warehouse receipts, trust receipts, or certificates of stock.  Most brokers, or even bankers, assume that when they have a stock certificate duly endorsed to them by the owner mentioned on its face they have an absolute and unimpeachable title to the stock therein represented.  Such, of course, is not the case except for recent statutes in a few States.  To take a familiar example, and I can think of none better to show exactly the difference between a personal contract non-assignable, a document which is assignable, and one which is negotiable—­a Harvard-Yale foot-ball ticket.  If the ticket is issued by the management to a person under his name, with a condition that it shall be used by no one else, it is a contract non-assignable.  If it is issued to him in the same manner, but with no provision against assignment or the use by another person, it would entitle such other person to whom the ticket was given to use the seat, but only under the title of the original holder; and if the assignment was later forbidden, or for other reasons the right recalled by the management, the holder would have no greater title to the seat; the contract is assignable, but not negotiable.  The assignee takes it merely