Suppose he should endow a college with a fund of $20,000,000. According to all precedent and to every principle of sound finance, that money must be safely invested, so that it would yield a return of $800,000 or $1,000,000 a year to pay the expenses of the institution. There was one fact in connection with the management of his own financial affairs after he came of age that he remembered very clearly--good investments are scarce. Stocks, bonds, anything paying a fair return without too great an element of risk, are hard to find. It would not be difficult probably to place safely and without appreciable harm to others the sum of twenty millions. But that was a mere bagatelle compared with nearly four thousand millions. The investment of such a treasure meant the overturning of all the world’s standards of value. It would be doing indirectly what he had determined not to do. It would mean that he should put the industrial and commercial world under tribute to such objects, good in themselves perhaps, as he might choose to designate. Had he the right to assume such a power, and what would he be giving the world in exchange for such an arbitrary assumption of authority? He began to doubt if a man who discovered a gold mine, however good his intentions, was a public benefactor. Perhaps the man who drove a railroad spike or plowed a field was of greater value to society after all. Brent’s meditations from being hopeful became gloomy. His golden burden threatened to become an incubus not only to himself but to humanity. He must not keep it, he must not invest it, he must not give it away. One other consideration added to his difficulties. Above all things he was resolved to preserve the secret of his riches. Every plan must bend to that end. He would avoid at any cost the notoriety which public knowledge of the possession of such wealth would bring him. It would mean infinite annoyance and even danger. He was absolutely selfish on this point, and he felt that he had a right to be. This determination cut him off from counsel and advice which he would have been glad to seek and of which he knew he stood sadly in need. He knew it would be necessary to make several partial confidences. No man should know, if he could prevent it, the whole truth or any large part of it. He was willing to pose as a man of great wealth in the ordinary sense, but nobody must suspect him of being a billionaire or even compare his riches with those of the Astors, the Vanderbilts, or the Goulds.