Money-making men; or, how to grow richRitchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
General
Money-making men; or, how to grow rich
Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
Rich people -- Biography
A CURIOUS romance adds one more instructive fact to point the moral of a
miser’s life, and of “the love of money.” For many years past an old man
might have been seen carrying an old bag on his shoulders, scraping up
odds and ends from the gutter, and garbage from the streets. This man’s
home was in a London suburb, a wretched room filled with rubbish—old
pieces of iron and brass, bits of string, &c. Around the room were tin
deed-boxes, which some of his friends half suspected must be possessed of
properties of more or less value. The wretched man lived on what he
chanced to pick up by the way, or what was given to him by the
charitable, who thought him to be a beggar. He used to attend one of our
metropolitan hospitals as an out-patient, receiving advice and medicine
gratis. This man died in the midst of squalid wretchedness and apparent
want. His friends at once proceeded to ransack the place in search for
his money; the deed-boxes proved to be “dummies,” containing only strings
and tapes, and for some time the search proved fruitless. At last,
however, the old chair in which he used to sit was found to contain, in
the worn-out cushion, a bundle of most valuable securities, amounting to
£60,000, and a will. This will, after leaving £100 each to his
executors, devised all the residue of his property to two
institutions—one moiety to the Royal Free Hospital, Gray’s-inn-road, in
which institution he used to obtain advice and medicine gratis, as above;
and the other half to the Royal National Lifeboat Association. So that
these two useful institutions will receive £30,000 each, and possibly
more, as the result of this “miser’s” wealth! Search is being made for
further documents amid the heaps of rubbish that have been allowed to
accumulate in the wretched man’s attic. The case constitutes a sad and
melancholy illustration of this fallen nature of ours, in one of its most
afflicting forms of eccentricity and madness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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