LIVES AND ANECDOTES OF MISERS
BY
F. SOMNER MERRYWEATHER

CONTENTS
PREFACE.
CHAPTER I: AVARICE DESCRIBED AND EXEMPLIFIED.
CHAPTER II: A FEW WORDS ON FRUGALITY AND SAVING.
CHAPTER III: TRADITIONARY RECOLLECTIONS OF JOHN OVERS, THE SOUTHWARK
MISER.
CHAPTER IV: SOME ACCOUNT OF THE "GREAT" AUDLEY.
CHAPTER V: MISERS—THEIR HABITS, SCHEMES, AND VICES.
CHAPTER VI: NOTICES OF JEMMY TAYLOR, THE BOROUGH USURER.
CHAPTER VII: LIFE OF THOMAS GUY THE BOOKSELLER
CHAPTER VIII. THE LIFE OF DANIEL DANCER.
CHAPTER IX: LIFE OF JOHN ELWES.
CHAPTER X: NOTICES OF FEMALE MISERS.
CHAPTER XI: THE INSANITY OF AVARICE.
CHAPTER XII: AVARICE AS AN HEREDITARY PASSION.
CHAPTER XIII: MAMMON WORSHIP; ITS SACRIFICES AND REWARDS.
CHAPTER XIV: CONCLUSION.


TITLE PAGE

LIVES
AND
ANECDOTES OF MISERS;
OR THE
Passion of Avarice Displayed:
IN THE PARSIMONIOUS HABITS, UNACCOUNTABLE LIVES AND REMARKABLE DEATHS
OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS MISERS OF ALL AGES, WITH A FEW WORDS ON
FRUGALITY AND SAVING.
BY
F. SOMNER MERRYWEATHER,
AUTHOR OF
BIBLIOMANIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES;" "GLIMMERINGS IN TEE DARK, OR LIGHTS
AND SHADOWS OF THE OLDEN TIME," ETC.:

LONDON:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO., STATIONERS' COURT,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1850.


PREFACE.

     IF the poet said true, when he wrote that the proper study of
mankind is man, the subject of this little volume will serve some
better object than mere curiosity. It has been my aim throughout its
compilation, to render it a volume of instruction as well as of
amusement. I think it a pleasant way to instil a moral by exciting
curiosity, and have endeavoured, in gathering together examples of
avarice, to show the evils of that passion—to show how, before its
influence, vanish the better spirits of the heart, and how impossible
it is, that within the avaricious soul, virtue or charity can find a
profitable habitation.

     In presenting this volume to the public, I deem it but justice
to myself, and candour to my readers, to intimate that I do not
profess to fill the book with novel and unheard-of instances of
avarice. I have not sought, like a diligent antiquary, into the
biographical minutiae of misers. I have not met with any old
manuscript lives; I have discovered in public libraries no curious
diary of a miser's schemes, or of a miser's gains. Some of these
materials have been in print before, and have doubtless long ago,
amused many of my readers; but a great proportion have been extracted
from books but little known—from forgotten pamphlets, and from
newspapers long out of date. Some have been gathered from old country
gossips, and some have been gleaned from ephemeral sources, to which
I cannot even myself distinctly refer. I have thought it fit to
declare thus much, lest, in introducing some anecdote which my
readers may have heard of before, they should accuse me of
plagiarism. I would have it remembered too, that old illustrations
may be so re-applied, as that the life of a Daniel Dancer, or of a
John Elwes, may still carry a warning, of how sinful is avarice, or
of how fruitless is an eternal parsimony; although they may have been
related in other books.

     My instances are veritable ones, and most of them I believe to
be illustrations of real life unexaggerated by fiction. Whilst I have
an object in the compilation—whilst I aim, to point now and then a
moral, and to exemplify sometimes one of the propensities of the
human mind, I have not forgotten that many will read the book to
drive away ennui; and that youthful readers in winter evenings may
expect some amusement from my pages. As I earnestly wish that such
may be the case, I have endeavoured, in choosing my illustrations and
anecdotes, to select those which appeared the most amusing from their
eccentricity, or the most instructive by the warning they convey. I
have winnowed my multitudinous materials from all those anecdotes and
reminiscences, which from the coarseness of their allusions, or the
indelicacy of their nature, might seem offensive to virtue, or likely
to prove dangerous to innocence.

     I hope then, the book may not be without its use, and am
inclined to say, as Southey said on one occasion,

Be it with thee according to thy worth;
Go, little book! in faith I send thee forth.

     or in the quaint words of a very old author, whose book I
happened just now to take down from my shelf, would say—
Go thou little book, with due reverence
And with an humble heart; recommend me
To all those, who of their benevolence
This little treatise doth read, hear, or see,
Wherewith I pray them contented to be,
And to amend it, in places behovable,
Wherein I have faulted, or be culpable.
For hard it is, a man to attain
To make a thing perfect, at the first sight;
But when it is read, and well over seen
Faults may be found, that never came to light,
Though the maker do his diligence and might.
Praying them to take it, as I have intended,
And to forgive one, if I have offended.
F. S. M.
Gloucester Place.
Kentish Town.


CHAPTER I: AVARICE DESCRIBED AND EXEMPLIFIED.

Description of this Passion by Ancient Writers—Dion the Philosopher—
Euripides—Aristotle—Plato—Anecdote of Alcibiades–Boethius—Sir George
Mackenzie on this Passion—Anecdote from Horace—Avarice in a Cardinal
and in a Pope—The Miser described by Old Burton; by Dryden; by
Goldsmith; by Robert Pollok—Avarice in History—Analogy between
Avarice and Prodigality—A Curious Anecdote—Avarice in the Great and
"Noble"—The Great Duke of Marlborough—Another Ducal Miser of a more
Modern Day—A Little Rustic and a Great Duke—The Insatiableness of
Acquisitiveness—Jemmy Wood of Gloucester—Osterval and Danden both
starved to Death—Strength and Durability of the Passion of Avarice—
Virtue not quite Extinct—Benevolence and Parsimony often displayed by
the same Individual—Guyot, a reputed Miser of Marseilles; his
singular Will—An unexpected Contribution to a good Work, &c. &c.

     ALTHOUGH a passion so common to mankind, there is none that has
received such scorn and contempt, as that of avarice. Philosophers
and poets of all ages, and of every nation, have exerted their wit
and satire, to denounce, and expose, the evils of this ungodly lust.
Moralists have declared this passion for gold and silver the most
unpardonable, because the most detestable, of all passions. "There
are men," exclaims an ancient satirist, "who do not profit to live,
but who seem to live, for no other purpose than to gain." The
denunciations of classic eloquence have been hurled against it.
Heathens regarded it as a sin, the possession of which would exclude
them from the favour of the gods. "Avarice," says Dion, the
philosopher, "is the source of all wickedness." It was the opinion of
the high-minded Euripides that an avaricious man could neither think
nor desire, any good thing; and Lucilius, the friend of Scipio
Africanus, does not forget to employ the pen of satire against this
base and grovelling passion. "A miser," he writes, "is good to
nobody, because he is wicked to himself." Plautus, in his character
of Euclio, has graphically portrayed the meanness of avarice; nor can
we even say that he exaggerates when he makes his miser repine, that
he cannot save the smoke from his own miserable fire. "The lust of
riches," says Aristotle, "is without end. Riches make a covetous man
poor; for his avarice will not allow him to employ, for fear of
losing them." Plato, the philosopher, once advised a miser, that if
he was desirous of becoming truly rich, not to strive to increase his
wealth, but to decrease his avarice—advice worthy of that great man.
Valerius speaks of a miser who, in a famine, sold a mouse for two
hundred pence, and died of starvation. [*Lib. 7. cap. vi.]

     It was a keen rebuke with which Socrates humbled the pride of
avarice in a wealthy ancient. Alcibiades, the great Athenian general,
was boasting to the philosopher of the extent of his land, and the
immensity of his riches. The stoic laid before the proud man a map of
the world. "Pray," said he, "show me where your land lieth here?" The
point of a pin would have covered all! "Though the rich miser," says
Boethius, "should be in a flowing whirlpool of gold, he could not
satisfy his appetite for wealth; let him adorn his neck with the
berries of the Red Sea, and cleave his rich soils with a hundred
oxen!" We might extract some curious anecdotes of misers from the
lore of classic ages. Horace speaks of a man named Ovid, who was so
abundantly rich that he could measure his gold and silver by bushels,
and yet was so penurious that he would go almost naked about the
streets, never eating enough to satisfy the demands of hunger.
Fearing lest he should fall into poverty, he lived most wretchedly
all his life.

     Our old English writers have not been less severe in delineating
the evils of avarice. "It is," says Brown in his Religio Medici, "not
so much a vice as a species of madness." "I must beg rich and
avaricious men's leave," says Sir George Mackenzie, "to laugh as much
at their folly, as I should do at a shepherd who would weep and
grieve, because his master would give him no more beasts to herd; or
at a steward because his lord gave him no more servants to feed. Nor
can I think a man who, having gained a great estate, is afraid to
live comfortably upon it, less ridiculous, than I would do him, who
having built a convenient, or it may be a stately house, should
choose to walk in the rain, or expose himself to storms, lest he
should defile or profane the floor of his almost idolized rooms."
Pontanus speaks of a cardinal who was so extraordinarily avaricious,
that he would often disguise himself as a poor slave, or groom, and
steal away the corn from his own horses. Many of the vices of the
popes—and history tells us they were not a few—sprang from their lust
for gold. The sins of Boniface the Eighth, of whom it was said that
"he crept into the popedom like a fox, ruled like a lion, and died
like a dog," were principally the sins of avarice. We may illustrate
his craft and avarice by an anecdote. In the year 1297 the
Franciscans were anxious to obtain from this pope a bull of
privileges, for which they offered him forty thousand ducats. The
pope inquired if they had the money ready; they answered that they
had, and that it was then at Rome in the hands of a certain banker,
whom they named. He desired three days to consider the matter, at the
end of which time they were requested to return. In the interval, the
pope sent to the banker, and demanded the money which the holy friars
had lodged in his hands; and in order to quiet the conscience of the
Italian money changer, he accompanied this demand with an absolution
for his breach of trust. When the three days were expired, the
Franciscans waited upon his "holiness," fully anticipating success.
The successor of Saint Peter received them graciously, but told them
that on due consideration he could not grant their request, as it was
opposed to the rule of Saint Francis; but, as to the money—why, it
must remain for the use of the holy see!

     Old Burton, with his usual learning, describes the
characteristics of the miser. "He is commonly sad," says he, "as
Ahab's spirit was, because he could not get Naboth's vineyard; and if
he lay out his money at any time, though it be to necessary uses, to
his own children's good, he brawls and scolds, his heart is heavy,
much disquieted he is, and loth to part from it. He is of a wearish,
dry, pale constitution, and cannot sleep for cares, and worldly
business; 'his riches,' saith Solomon, 'will not let him sleep;' or
if he do sleep, it is of a very unquiet, interrupt, unpleasing sleep,
with his bags in his arms; and though he be at a banquet, or some
merry feast, he sighs for grief of heart; his wearish body takes no
rest; he is troubled in his abundance, and sorrowful in plenty;
unhappy in the present, and more unhappy in the life to come. He is a
perpetual drudge; restless in his thoughts, and never satisfied; a
slave—a wretch—a dust worm, still seeking what sacrifice he may offer
to his golden god!" Dryden SUMS up the misery of avarice in a few
lines; he says,

Content is wealth, the riches of the mind,
And happy he who can that treasure find;
But the base miser starves amidst his store,
Broods on his gold; and griping still for more,
Sits sadly pining, and believes he's poor!
And Goldsmith, in his graphic and charming way, thus refers to the
insatiable nature of this unholy passion:

As some lone miser visiting his store,
Bends at his treasure, counts, recounts it o'er;
Hoards after hoards, his rising raptures fill,
Yet still he sighs, for hoards are wanting still.

     Moirre in his "L'Avare," and Shadwell in his "Miser," have both
attempted to display the workings of avarice by dramatic
representation. Far from exaggerating, their characters fall short of
the reality, and have all been surpassed by the examples of niggardly
saving, and penury, given to us in the lives of Daniel Dancer, John
Elwes, Jemmy Taylor, and their eccentric clan. Robert Pollok, the
author of "The Course of Time," thus paints in words the miser at his
store:

But there was one in folly further gone;
With eye awry, incurable, and wild,
The laughing stock of devils and of men,
And by his guardian angel quite given up—
The miser, who with dust inanimate
Held wedded intercourse. Ill guided wretch!
Thou might'st have seen him at the midnight hour,
When good men slept, and in light winged dreams
Ascended up to God—in wasteful hall,
With vigilance and fasting worn to skin
And bone, and wrapped in moat debasing rags:
Thou might'st have seen him bending o'er his heaps,
And holding strange communion with his gold;
And as his thievish fancy seemed to hear
The nightman's foot approach, starting alarmed;
And in his old, decrepit, withered hand,
That palsy shook, grasping the yellow earth
To make it sure. Of all God made upright,
And in their nostrils breathed a living soul,
Most fallen, most prone, most earthy, most debased.
Of all that sold Eternity for Time,
None bargained on so easy terms for death.
Illustrious fool! nay, most inhuman wretch!
He sat among his bags, and, with a look
Which hell might be made ashamed of; drove the poor
Away unalmsed; and 'midst abundance died—
Sorest of evils—died of utter want!

     If we were disposed to do so, it would be no difficult task to
show the powerful influence of avarice upon the rise and progress of
nations, and it would be instructive to comment, with the annals of
our country before us, upon the working of this passion, in the
history of the English people. We should observe, in the origin of
those wars and tumults, which incessantly employed the arms, and fed
the turbulent passions of our early kings, the grim features of
avarice. We should behold in the tyranny and oppression of monarchs
over their people, the power of the same greedy and selfish lust, and
we should find the corruptions, and abominations, of the old popish
church, to have sprang from the love of gold. The most glaring evils
of society, and the grossest corruptions of religion, were instigated
and supported by the promptings of avarice. Monarchs, ravenous to
acquire, looked enviously at rival kingdoms; the more they obtained,
the more did they demand. The miseries of war, the slaughter of
legions of their subjects were as nothing, when opposed to their
schemes of avarice and ambition. It was the treasures which the
parsimony of the Jews accumulated that excited in old England the
cupidity of Norman power. Christian kings and Israelitish money-
lenders were alike greedy after wealth; and we all know what
massacres and plundering arose from this love of gold. It was the
avarice of monks and popish priests that excited the envy of Henry
Tudor. In their case the love of gold was the root of all evil, as
regarded their own interests at least; for had the monks adhered to
their ancient rules of poverty, and prayer; their monasteries would
not have been so zealously suppressed.

     The passion of avarice has various manifestations; one craves
for money but to hoard it in his chests, others crave for money to
spend it in their selfish pleasures. Thus it is that avarice is
sometimes found in the spendthrift, and thus it is that spendthrifts
so often become inveterate misers. Perhaps the best illustration of
this feeling is in the parsimony and extravagance which we sometimes
observe combined in gamesters. Did we want a fearful lesson, we would
go to the gaming table to behold the demon of avarice in his triumph—
the haggard face—the feverish brow—the eager anxious eye—the nervous
twitches of the mouth, and the clenching of the hands, are the
outward signs of the fierce and deadly struggle within. The
transition, indeed, from prodigality to avarice is so easy, that one
would almost feel inclined to regard the spendthrift, greedy for
sensual enjoyment and riotous pleasure, as only exhibiting another
manifestation of avarice; it is a species of that same covetous
feeling, longing to enjoy a greater portion of pleasure than usually
falls to the lot of man: it is selfishness; and selfishness is next
akin to avarice. A young man of vicious principles squandered in a
few years a sumptuous fortune. His houses and his lands had one by
one, and piece by piece, been forfeited to gamblers, or sold to
gratify his profligacy. His fortune gone, and no longer possessing
the means of dissipation, he found his companions desert him; he had
treated them liberally during his mad career; they had feasted at his
table, and drunk plenteously of his wine; but companions in sensual
joys are seldom grateful or sincere in their friendship. Forsaken and
alone, he began to despair, and formed a resolution, which when
formed few, in the adversity of fortune, have the courage to resist—
he resolved to terminate with his own hand, a life which he deemed no
longer desirable, and in which he could see no further source of
happiness. He left his home in this suicidal mind, and wandering
about, he came almost unconsciously to the brow of an eminence, which
looked down upon what were lately his estates. He threw himself upon
the ground, and for the first time for many years began to meditate.
It was a good spirit that was now struggling in the future miser,
before which the demon of suicide fled. He sat for hours in that
brown study, and he arose an altered and determined man He had formed
a resolution that all those fair lands should be his again. He walked
hastily forward, determined to avail himself of the first opportunity
of earning money that presented itself; and when he had obtained it,
he resolved to use it with rigid parsimony. He had conquered during
those few hours of reflection every feeling of pride, and his first
attempt to earn money was a sufficient test of the sincerity of this
triumph. He saw a heap of coals shot out of a cart, on the pavement
before a house; he offered to shovel them into the cellar; his
services were accepted, and remunerated with a trifling sum; yet
trifling as it was, he resolved to save the greatest portion. He
embraced every means of obtaining money, and did not allow himself to
consider the meanness or servility of the occupation. Everything that
could be applied to a use he hoarded up, and when accumulated sold.
By these means, step by step, and little by little, after years of
patient labour, he saved enough to purchase a few cattle; these he
improved, and after a while sold at a profit. During all this time he
practiced the strictest parsimony, and he was ultimately enabled, by
his accumulations, to recover his lost estates. Parsimony such as
this we should feel disposed to excuse, but the result in his case,
it is said, was disastrous, for parsimony became, by long habit,
confirmed into avarice, and the man died a scraping, grasping miser,
with sixty thousand pounds in his money chests.

     It is not always that avarice assumes the garb of wretchedness;
it is not always that the miser appears to the public eye, a lank and
half-starved wretch, with loathsome rags upon his shoulders. The
passion is sometimes associated with men, whose names have been
renowned for great actions, and for vast achievements in the world.
That great warrior, the Duke of Marlborough, allowed the promptings
of avarice to tarnish a fame designed to live for centuries. Many and
disreputable are the charges of peculation which have been advanced
against him, and numerous are the anecdotes remembered by tradition,
or recorded in books, of his pinching parsimony. When the clouds were
gathering in the heavens, and infirmity had warned him of coming
dissolution, he would walk from the public room in Bath to his
lodgings, in a cold dark night, through wind and rain, to save
sixpence for coach hire. Yet that great general left at his death a
fortune of more than a million and a half of money, which, as if to
show to others the folly of such meanless parsimony, was inherited by
a grandson of Lord Trevors, who had been one of his bitterest
enemies. But we need not go back so far to find noble misers; some of
the members of our proud nobility of today, afford striking examples
of parsimony and avarice in the great. We have known some whose 
riches are so great, that they may be compared with the riches of
Croesus; grumble over their tradesmen's bills, and haggle for an hour
to obtain the reduction of a shilling, did not interest prompt the
tradesman sooner to submit, in hopes of future "patronage," from such
distinguished and noble personages. If the reader will take the
trouble to enquire, he may glean some curious anecdotes of a "noble"
miser, of the present day, whose parsimony is so great, that he
deprives his domestics of their perquisites, and has been known to
have sold the refuse fat from his own kitchen for the trifle which it
produced. This descendant of a valiant race may be seen, in the
locality of his own mansion, with a huge basket on his arm, wandering
from shop to shop, and from stall to stall, to pick up bargains or
thrifty provender for his household. He not only attends to the
economy of his kitchen, but even to the most minute affairs of his
farm; his dairy receives no small share of his attention, and he will
sometimes condescend to measure out, and sell his milk in retail, to
the neighbouring villagers. One morning, it is related, a little girl
presented herself at the castle, and giving in her jug and penny, was
served by his grace, who, pleased with her appearance, gave the
little damsel a kiss, telling her at the same time that she would
always now be able to say, that she had been kissed by a duke. "Yes,"
replied the little rustic, "but you took the penny, though!" We could
point to many such instances of aristocratic penury, but we do not
wish to draw our illustrations from contemporary characters.

     The total absence of all ulterior motive in the parsimony of the
miser is a convincing proof of how powerful are the cravings of
acquisitiveness, when unduly excited. "If a miser be the owner of
fifty acres," said Dr. Combe, "it will give him delight to acquire
fifty more; if of one thousand, or one hundred thousand, he will
still be gratified in adding to this number. His understanding may be
convinced that he already possesses ample store for any enjoyment,
and abundant to provide against every want; yet if this faculty be
active, he will feel his joys impaired if he cease to amass." The
ever famous Jemmy Wood, of Gloucester, who died worth nearly two
millions of money, did not cease to go on accumulating wealth after
he had obtained more than he or his family could spend in their
lifetime, if they spent with common prudence. But the propensity to
acquire, when unduly active, absorbs all other powers and motives of
the human mind. The love of accumulating gold is so intense that it
defies all fear of death, and the being whose will is submissive to
its dictates, would calmly look starvation in the face; and rather
than invade his hoards to purchase a few extra comforts for the body,
expire by lingering and slow degrees. Ostervald, the miser, died,
because he would not spend a few shillings in the purchase of a
little soup; and Danden, the miser, of Berlin, positively died of
starvation, whilst he had secreted under his floor twenty thousand
crowns in specie. He had no heir but a brother, with whom he had been
at enmity for seven and thirty years, because he had once sent him a
letter without paying the postage. Yet this sordid wretch was a man
of intellectual talent, and a master of languages. "True it is," as
Dr. Combe asserts, "that when the pursuit of wealth becomes the chief
business of life, acquisitiveness engrosses the intellect, deadens
the moral sentiments and debases the whole faculties of the mind."[*
System of Phrenology, vol. i. p. 318.]

     Other passions diminish in their strength, as age approaches.
The sensual passions become palled by gratification. The sins of
youth are forgotten, as the hair grows grey, and the eyes become
dimmed with the film of age; but the passion of avarice, unlike other
passions of the human mind, knows no satiety; it becomes strengthened
by its gratification; it derives nourishment from its very excesses,
and, like the sturdy oak, becomes stronger as its age increases. It
is difficult to discover the motives of hoary avarice—with limbs
bending beneath the weight of years—with hair blanched by the snows
of many winters—sans sight—sans teeth—sans everything—yet gloating
over gold which he can never live to want, and greedy for
acquisitions which can procure no happiness. We can only imagine that
the mind, so absorbed by avarice, is rendered imbecile to all other
feelings; or that the thoughts become so engrossed in their mammon
worship, as to forget the flight of years, and the phantom of the
tomb! And yet, perhaps, even the worst passions of the human mind are
incapable of extinguishing all semblance of a better nature. Some
slight trace of virtue—some lingering remains of charity—some
indications of benevolence, will lie slumbering in the heart,
although the calculations of avarice, and the audacity of crime, may
have buried those feelings, and incased them as in the grave. The
heart of the miser—of the robber—of even the murderer; if studied
with intense scrutiny—if probed with skill, will not be found totally
impregnable. Vice may have contaminated the stream of thought, and
guarded the heart with the watchfulness of a fiend; but there is no
breast so besieged, that the angel of goodness may not redeem;—no
heart, some avenue of which may not be surprised—no nature so
obdurate, to which some good feeling or sentiment of love, may not
appeal. Even where sin has most contaminated the heart, and excited
the evil passions of the human mind, there is some trait of humanity
still left to emulate the philanthropist to exertion, and to inspire
the blackest sinner with the sunshine of hope.

     What is more anomalous in nature than the mind of man? Sometimes
passions and sentiments, diametrically opposite in their nature, are
found existing in the same individual. Ferocity and tenderness—
revenge and love—parsimony and charity grow up, and are made manifest
side by side. Nothing, perhaps, has won so much for the philosophy of
Gall and Spurzheim as this singular fact, for nothing seems to
demonstrate so clearly the innateness of our ideas and capacities.
The education or peculiar mental training that would tend to develop
a grasping pinching parsimony, certainly does not appear to us the
kind of training to implant principles of benevolence, and charity;
in the human heart. And yet, perhaps, in these very anomalies, if we
closely examine, we shall find a spirit of harmony, one propensity
will seem to prompt and call into activity another feeling; the
virtue becomes the excuse for the vice, and the mind is lulled by the
gratification of two of its most opposite, but most powerful
propensities, till the bad man thinks his motives good, and looks
with complacency upon his evil deeds. We have a curious anecdote of
the combination of parsimony with charity, to illustrate our meaning,
and to show how a sordid vice is made by some subservient to their
schemes of benevolence and love. We willingly forget the vice, and
call it self-denial, whilst dwelling upon the munificence of the
virtue.

     Some years ago, there lived in Marseilles an old man of the name
of Guyot; he was known to every inhabitant, and every urchin in the
streets could point him out as a niggard in his dealings, and a
wretch of the utmost penury in his habits of life. From his boyhood,
this old man had lived in the City of Marseilles, and, although the
people treated him with scorn and disgust, nothing could induce him
to leave it. When he walked the streets he was followed by a crowd of
boys, who, hating him as a grasping miser, hooted him vociferously—
insulted him with the coarsest epithets, and sometimes annoyed him by
casting stones and filth at his person. There was no one to speak a
kind word in his favour—no one to bestow an act of friendship, or a
nod of recognition upon Guyot. He was regarded by all as an
avaricious, griping old miser, whose whole life was devoted to the
hoarding up of gold. At last this object of universal scorn died, and
it was found that, by his parsimony, he had amassed an ample fortune.
What was the surprise of his executors on opening his will, to find
these remarkable words:—"Having observed, from my infancy, that the
poor of Marseilles are ill supplied with water, which can only be
procured at a great price, I have cheerfully laboured the whole of my
life to procure for them this great blessing, and I direct that the
whole of my property shall be expended in building an aqueduct for
their use!"

     When it was proposed to build Bethlehem Hospital, many
benevolent individuals volunteered to solicit contributions by
calling upon the inhabitants of London. Two of these gentlemen went
to a small house in an impoverished neighbourhood; for the pence of
the poor were solicited as well as the pounds of the rich. The door
was open, and, as they drew nigh, they overheard an old man scolding
his female servant for having thrown away a match, only one end of
which had been used. Although so trivial a matter, the master
appeared to be much enraged, and the collectors remained sometime
outside the door, before the old man had finished his angry lecture.
When the tones of his voice were somewhat subdued, they entered, and
presenting themselves to this strict observer of frugality and
saving, explained the object of their application; but they did not
anticipate much success. The miser, however, for such he was reputed
in the neighbourhood, no sooner understood their object, than he
opened a closet, and bringing forth a well filled bag, counted
therefrom four hundred guineas, which he presented to the astonished
applicants. They expressed their surprise and thankfulness, and could
not refrain from telling the old gentleman that they had overheard
his quarrel with his domestic, and how little they expected, in
consequence, to have met with such munificence from him. "Gentlemen,"
replied the old man, "your surprise is occasioned by my care of a
thing, of such little consequence; but I keep my house, and save my
money in my own way; my parsimony enables me to bestow more liberally
in charity. With regard to benevolent donations, you may always
expect most from prudent people who keep their own accounts, and who
pay attention to trifles." When he had thus addressed them, he
somewhat abruptly requested them to withdraw, and closed the door
after them; thinking, perhaps, more of the match which his maid had
so wantonly destroyed, than of the four hundred guineas which his
benevolence had prompted him to bestow.



CHAPTER II: A FEW WORDS ON FRUGALITY AND SAVING.

Avarice the abuse of a feeling which God intended as a blessing—The
virtue of Economy—Extravagance in literary Men—Parsimony versus
Frugality—How to Save—The importance of little things—Jacob Clement
the City Broker—Jacques Lafitte—The Dust Heap—Nothing useless—Marine
Storekeepers—Mysterious Bone-pickers—Singular death of a Miser, &c.,
&c.

     Rather would we, that our pen fell powerless from our hand, than
that we should inadvertently have said one word of discouragement to
they who are striving, by cheerful and willing self-denial, to
provide out of humble incomes a provision against the hour of
misfortune. Because men will drink wine till they become no longer
human—because men, in striving to degrade themselves to a level with
beasts, forget all the responsibilities of their higher nature, and
find delight in wallowing in oblivious drunkenness; we would not, on
that account, refuse to partake with temperance of that which God has
given us as a blessing. And because men forget their souls, and the
nobler purposes of life, and in their eagerness and avarice for gold,
root out all good and manly feeling, and coin, as it were, their very
hearts into metal; we would not neglect, by prudent and honourable
means, to acquire wealth. Whilst we abhor the abuse, and think it
well to guard others by hideous examples of its folly and vice, we
can appreciate and participate in its legitimate use. We look upon it
as a solemn duty in men, whether regarded as citizens or as fathers
of families, to practice a prudent economy; and the man who is frugal
without being avaricious—who is parsimonious without being sordid—we
regard as fulfilling one of his greatest social duties. Joseph, be it
remembered, was thought to display his sagacity when he advised
Pharaoh to lay up in the seven plenteous years, for the seven ensuing
years of famine. "Where," said the king, "shall we find such an one
as this? A man in whom is the spirit of God!" And St. Paul solemnly
affirms that "he hath sunk even below infidelity, who is negligent to
provide for those of his own house." If, therefore, economy is a
virtue, wastefulness becomes a sin. And yet, how many weakly glory in
being thought extravagant; ruined spendthrifts will boast of their
meanless prodigality, and their wasteful dissipation, as if in their
past liberal selfishness they could claim some forbearance for their
present disrepute, or some compassion for the misfortunes into which
their own heedlessness has thrown them. The learned, too, will
disclaim all knowledge of the dull routine of economy, and proclaim
their ignorance of the affairs of life, as if the confession endowed
them with a virtue; but perfection is not the privilege of any order
of men, and many who ought to have been the monitors of mankind,
whose talents have made their names immortal, embittered their lives,
and impaired the vigour of their intellects, by their thoughtless and
wanton improvidence. The calamities of authors is a hackneyed theme.
Savage, Steel, Sheridan, Gay, Logan, and Maginn, are not instances,
as some have asserted, of literary misfortune and neglect, so much as
examples of learned profligacy and imprudence. Most of them were at
times affluent, and most of them had opportunities in the success and
popularity of their writings, of providing means to ward off those
calamities which darkened the annals of their literary history, and
which made them so familiar with

"Want, the garret, and the jail."

     We are too apt to overlook the difference which subsists between
parsimony and avarice; the one, while it may be a virtue in some, is
a sin in others; but avarice, in whomsoever it may appear, must
always be regarded as a vice. Parsimony in the man who, having but a
narrow income, is anxious to provide for his family, who is ambitious
to ascend higher in the social scale, and who feels solicitous to
save his progeny from some of those hard vicissitudes of poverty
which his own experience has taught him to dread; parsimony in such
an one becomes a virtue, worthy of our highest regard, and deserving
our warmest approbation. It is kindled by the best feelings of
nature, and the tenderest sympathies of the heart. It is a virtuous
parsimony that seeks out of present affluence, to lay by something
for a rainy day. It is an indication of a sinful avarice that would
employ extortion, or use craft, and Israelitish cunning, to augment
an already abundant store. It is a virtuous parsimony that would save
a little to help an aged parent in the evening of life; to administer
to the wants of the sick, or to provide the sad obsequies for poorer
relatives. It is an indication of sinful avarice that would let the
parent shiver over a fireless hearth, that would begrudge one atom of
wealth to soothe the bed of sickness, or that would allow the charity
of strangers to provide the last home for departed kindred. Avarice,
indeed, is but a diseased action of a propensity, which, if properly
used, is beneficial to our well-being. The propensity to acquire is
natural to the human mind, and when it is manifested by a prudent
frugality, is one of the greatest moral blessings of life. Religion
enjoins, and scripture warrants, the practice of economy, and

"Reason bids you for your own provide."—POPE.

     The best and ablest writers of every age have proclaimed its
benefits, and enforced it as a habit, which not only keeps poverty
and want from humble homes, but inspires its observer with a feeling 
of manly independence and inward comfort, which greatly help to rob
of their sting, the cares and vicissitudes of life. Whilst,
therefore, in illustrating the passion of avarice, we have
endeavoured to display by remarkable examples, the grovelling
sordidness of that vice, we are anxious to distinguish between it,
and its opposite virtue; as avarice is one of the most debasing
propensities of the human mind, so is frugality one of its greatest
virtues. Whilst one is the source of misery, wretchedness, and
endless sin; the other is the promoter of domestic happiness, of
homely comfort, and social joy.

     Whilst, however, we applaud the economist, we detest the miser,
and would willingly raise our voice, to aid the cry against the
avaricious man; the cringing, grasping, selfish accumulator of gold,
the cold, unfeeling, heartless money-lender. We would raise our voice
against the greedy and the selfish, who would wrong the widow of her
pittance, and who, whilst he possessed the means, would refuse to
help the poor and indigent, with a fraction of his wealth. We would
raise our voice, too, against that man, who, to increase his stores,
would stoop to mean and grovelling acts, or sell his honour for a
little gold. A heart so enshrined in Mammon, is not worthy the
society of upright men, and well deserves contempt. Reader! shun such
when you meet with them; their very touch is contamination, and to
seek their gold, is indeed to seek the wages of sin and death. It is
hard that men will not always distinguish between wretches so
worthless, and the honest, praiseworthy, frugal man. And yet, how
often are the efforts of the latter discouraged by the unfeeling
voice of the thoughtless prodigal, who laughs at his saving, and
calls it parsimony; and at his frugality, and calls it avarice.

     An ingenious writer compares a miser to a growing tree, which,
whilst living and increasing, can be applied to no immediate use, but
which at last, when cut down, supplies material for the most useful
purposes; and a poet says, that

Riches, like insects, when concealed they lie,
Wait but for wings, and in their season fly.
Who sees pale Mammon pine amidst his store,
Sees but a backward steward of the poor;
This year a reservoir to keep and spare,
The next, a fountain, spouting through his heir.
POPE.

     If this offers no palliation for the vice of avarice, it shows
that the result of a miser's life, is at least, more profitable to
mankind than that of the spendthrift. The miser treasures up his gold
in his senseless fondness for the yellow metal: he cares not to put
it out to interest or to invest it in commerce: he hoards it up,
gloats over it in the day, and handles it in the dark at night. He
sleeps with his bony fingers clenched about his bags, holding them
tighter in his fitful dreams, lest the robbers, who are ever passing
before him in his visions, should take his treasure from him. If the
wind shakes his crazy habitation, the miser, with a sudden start,
awakes:

"Along the silent room he stalks,
Looks back, and trembles as he walks.
Each lock, and every bolt, he tries,
In every creek and corner pries;
Then opes the chest, with treasure stored,
And stands in raptures o'er his hoard."

     A being like this, who can help despising? But such an one bears
no resemblance to the frugal man, whose object is merely to refrain
from useless expenditure; and whilst participating with thankfulness
in a few of the enjoyments, manifests no anxiety to revel in the
superfluities of life till he has provided something to help him in
adversity and decay.

     With those who have no hereditary birthright before them—who
have only their health and muscles for a fortune, and who, like the
silkworm, must spin all their riches out of their own bosom—industry
and frugality become, as we have said before, solemn duties, which
they have no more right to neglect than they have to cast aside their
implements of toil, and refuse to work for their daily bread: and yet
how often do we see the artisan, with a numerous progeny, clustering
around him, with a fond wife depending on his exertions, neglect,
although he has ample opportunities, to lay by one penny to aid in
the hour of sickness, or to help his family should death call him
away. It is a bitter thought for a dying man, that they who crowd
around his bed with anxious solicitude—they who for so many years he
has loved and cherished—who have been a comfort to him in trouble,
and a solace in the dark hour of adversity—that the dear being who
has journeyed with him so cheerfully along the stony path of life,
and who ever had a smile of hope for him, and a kind word to bless
him when his soul was heavy—who always entered into his wishes, and
sympathised with his emotions—whose warm and faithful heart,
overflowing with a chaste and confiding love,,was ever busy in
scheming little plans to give him pleasure, and to anticipate his
unuttered wishes: it is gall and bitterness to a dying man to think
that this dear creature and his little ones should be left
unprotected in the wide world alone—in the midst of unsympathising
strangers, and the prospect of the workhouse as the only refuge from
starvation. A bleak and torturing thought is that, to wring the
expiring heart of a dying man! It is seldom, indeed, that one who has
passed his life so thoughtlessly, can enjoy that inward consolation,
and that sustaining hope, which ought, at the moment of death, to
fill the soul of a Christian: his anxious mind cannot untwine itself
from its painful reveries, and he breathes his last without the peace
of God that passeth all understanding.

     We consider it, then, an imperative duty that all who have the
power, should save—that they should husband up little by little an
increasing store for their future wants. Some will say that, by doing
this we are showing how little faith we have in Providence; but they
that say so, speak unadvisedly, and might as well argue that, if we
saw a child in the water, and could save it, we ought not to do so,
but trust to Providence for its rescue. It is our duty to be
provident, careful, and frugal: it is our duty, because the God of
heaven bade us gather up the fragments that remain, and to allow
nothing to be lost. We must not act, in this railway-stirring age,
like the waggoner in the bog, but embrace the opportunities which God
has given us, and use his gifts with prudence. Others will say,
sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, and advise us to think
less about what may happen to us by and bye; but they draw false
reasoning from another holy passage, for if we become the humble
instruments of our own preservation from pecuniary want, does that
prove less our gratitude to Providence for having given us the means
to do so? Yet this is a maxim, which, when indiscriminately applied,
has sometimes wrought the ruin of many, both good and noble. James
Ballantyne, the partner of Sir Walter Scott, on his death-bed,
affirmed that many of those calamities which overtook them, and which
involved the ruin of the great literary magician, was owing to the
weakness of Scott in shrinking from the appearance of danger, and
from his aptness to carry too far the maxim, that, "sufficient for
the day is the evil thereof."

     Many who have the wish to be frugal will scarcely know how to
begin: they have lived so long the thoughtless spendthrift, that they
cannot be thoughtful all at once. They will mention the trifling sum
that forms their weekly earnings, and ask, how is it possible to
reserve even a little, out of such a pittance? It is a cheerful
proverb that tells us "Where there is a will there is a way;" and the
homely truism is a suitable answer to all who ask, How can I save?

     There are few working men who, if they have the desire to be
economical, will not call to mind some useless luxury, in which they
are in the habit of indulging, and from which they could easily
refrain. Taste and caprice have invented an infinite variety of
superficial wants, in these modem times, which are as unnecessary to
our happiness, as some of them are injurious to our bodies. The
morning glass, the evening pipe, or the Saturday's night revel, might
be profitably dispensed with, both to the health and to the purse.
The savings may not be great at first, but frugality will have gained
the ascendancy; and it is astonishing how much prosperity will
follow, and how many opportunities will offer, of adding to the
little store, if prudence and industry are on the watch. Retrench, in
every reasonable manner, your expenses, and strictly adhere to the
admirable axiom of the Roman poet-
"Infra
Fortunam debet quisque; manere suam."—OVID.
("Everyone should live within his income")

and recollect the words of Dr. Cotton, that

"Your portion is not large indeed,
But then, how little do you need,
For Nature's calls are few;
In this the Art of living lies,
To want no more than may suffice,
And make that little do."

     There are few who have not, at one time or other, felt, how
useful a few pounds would have proved, in advancing their future
prospects; and who have not, at such times, looked back with regret 
to their past extravagance, and to their thoughtlessness, in spending
stray sixpences. It is only when we count up such trivial sums, that
we are convinced of their importance, or at all capable of judging
how much we have lost by squandering them. The old tale of the poor
drover, who gradually scraped enough together to purchase a calf,
and, from that small beginning, went on until he became the possessor
of many thousands a year, is an instance of frugality worth
remembering; yet let it never be forgotten, that, "although the
apprehensions of future wants may justify a cautious frugality, they
can by no means excuse a sordid avarice." Bearing this in mind, the
lives of misers, whilst they portray the evils of an inordinate
passion to acquire, also illustrate a truism, well deserving the
attention of all who are anxious to practice frugality without
covetousness. The importance of little things, the value of trifles,
and the power of the pence, is nowhere so strikingly exemplified, as
in the habits of those eccentric characters, whose lives we have here
presented to the reader. "Take care," said Lord Chesterfield, "of the
pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves." The saying is
worthy of remembrance; for small sums may, with some aptness, be
compared to seconds of time, which generate years, centuries, and
even eternity itself. Let not a regard for little things be thought a
manifestation of avarice. Our Rothschilds, our Barings, and our
Coutts', would never have amassed their almost fabulous fortunes, had
they not constantly regarded little things, and looked well after the
pence. Many of the most wealthy members of the Stock Exchange, who
can now lend their thousands, and their tens of thousands, originally
belonged to the most subordinate ranks of society. Jacob Clement, the
city broker, who died a few years ago, leaving a fortune of three
hundred thousand pounds, began life as a pot-boy at an inn, at
Aylesbury. His first situation, in London, was as a waiter; but he
had perseverance, practised frugality, and encouraged habits of
saving; had he neglected such habits, he would probably have died a
waiter. There is wisdom in that saying of the miser, who maintained,
that "a farthing is the semina of wealth, the seed of a golden
progeny;" and often has its truth been remembered, not only by
misers, but by those whose virtues have only been equalled by their
prosperity. Perhaps in no instance was this parsimonious care for
trifles, so truly elevated into a virtue, as exemplified in the life
of Jacques Laffitte. There appears something almost noble, in the
pinching, screwing parsimony of that great banker. In an early month
of the year 1778, with a tolerable education, and with many natural
qualifications, for a financial life, Jacques Laffitte was seeking
for a situation as a clerk. He had high hopes, and a light heart, for
he brought with him a letter of introduction to M. Perregaux, the
Swiss banker. But with all his sanguine anticipations, and golden day
dreams, he was bashful, and retiring. It was with a trembling heart
that the young provincial appeared before the Parisian man of bonds
and gold; he managed to explain the purpose of his visit, and
presented his letter of recommendation. The banker quietly read the
note. "It is impossible," said he, as he laid it aside, "that I can
find room for you at present; all my offices are fall; should there
be a vacancy at a future time, I will see what can be done; in the
meantime, I advise you to seek elsewhere, as it may be a considerable
period before I shall be able to admit you." Away went sunshine, and
prosperous visions! Disappointed and gloomy, poor Jacques left the
presence of the polite banker. As he crossed, with downcast eyes, the
court-yard of the noble mansion, he observed a pin lying on the
ground; his habitual habits of frugality, amidst his disappointment,
were still upon the watch; he picked up the pin, and carefully stuck
it into the lapel of his coat. From that trivial action sprang his
future greatness; that one single act of frugal care and regard for
little things, opened the way to a stupendous fortune. From the
window of his cabinet M. Perregaux had observed the action of the
rejected clerk, and he wisely thought, that the man who would stoop
to pick up a pin, under such circumstances, was endowed with the
necessary qualities for a good economist; he read in that single act
of parsimony, an indication of a great financial mind, and he deemed
the acquisition of such an one as wealth itself.

     Before the day had closed, Laffitte received a note from the
banker. "A place," it said, "is made for you at my office, which you
may take possession of to-morrow." The banker was not deceived in his
estimate of the character of Laffitte, and the young clerk soon
displayed a talent and aptness for his calling, that procured his
advancement from the clerk to the cashier; from a cashier to a
partner; and from a partner to the head proprietor of the first
banking-house in Paris. He became a deputy, and then president of the
Council of Ministers. What a destiny for the man who would stoop to
pick up a pin!

     In the zenith of his prosperity, Lafitte retained the same
principles of frugality and saving. He was never the avaricious and
grasping miser, but he was ever the parsimonious saver. He would
scold, and sometimes read his clerks a lecture upon their wilful
waste of a pen, a piece of paper, or an inch of twine; yet he had a
heart of charity, and could be munificent in his benevolence. One
morning a sister of St. Vincent de Paul entered the boudoir of the
banker, to solicit his subscription to some charitable object. He
appeared somewhat ruffled in his temper, but he received her
graciously. "What do you require, my good sister," he asked. "Sir,"
she replied, "I come to you on behalf of my poor neighbours; their
distress is great." "Indeed! you have called at the right time, for
just now I am angry with that gentleman for wasting my wafers." At
the same time, he pointed to a young man seated at a desk, who
smiled, but was evidently disconcerted. The sister of charity feared
her mission would be a fruitless one; and that her visit might not be
without some good result, she amiably applied herself to excuse the
fault of the young clerk, who had merited the reproof of the careful
money dealer, by not making one wafer serve to seal two letters.
Lafitte listened attentively, and afterwards presented to the good
sister a check for one thousand francs, saying, at the same time,
"If, in my career, I had not economized in trifles, it would not be
so easily for me to have contributed to-day to the excellent object
which you have in view. Pray look in upon me from time to time!" The
character of the banker loses nothing by this regard for little
things.

     Some years ago, a large dust contractor had a daughter, who was
about to be married. His future son-in-law was respectable, but not
wealthy, and the match in point of pecuniary circumstances was in his
favour. He did not ask for a dowry, but the father of the young lady
promised to make them a present on their wedding day. The guests were
assembled, the ceremony had been completed, and the father called his
son on one side. "I promised to make you a present on your marriage;
you observe," said he, pointing through the window at which they were
standing, "that large heap of dust, I give it you as my daughter's
dowry." The young man bowed, he had expected a few hundred guineas;
but he felt chagrined, and almost insulted at such a present. "A heap
of dust and dirt, the scrapings of the public street! A fine marriage
gift," he murmured to himself, "and a vexatious disappointment!"
Nothing more was said at the time; but after the honeymoon he began
to think of the dowry. He offered it for sale, and great was his
surprise to find the heap of dust, which he had thought so worthless,
produce him two thousand pounds. Thus it is, that what some men
despise, the frugal and the parsimonious will make the groundwork of
a fortune.

     There is nothing without its use, and nothing that will not
produce a price. Thousands of pounds are earned in London every year,
by collecting fragments of old rags, pieces of old nails, and
remnants of old cord and twine. These are hoarded up, sorted out, and
sold to the proprietors of those dingy receptacles of filth and fat,
which are to be found in all the back streets of the metropolis. The
"marine store" trade is one of the most profitable in London; by
encouraging thrift in others, the dealers in such things grow thrifty
themselves. They learn by their business the value of little things;
they will buy a farthing's worth of iron, and a pennyworth of dirty
rags. In London, there are a number of amphibious kind of human
beings—in appearance neither men nor women, but something between the
two. They are known by their peculiar and grotesque appearance. Some
wear a hat, but cover their shoulders with a gown. Some are adorned
in an old bonnet, but as if to keep up the mystery, button a shabby
dress coat tightly round their person. In fact, few could venture to
predict to which sex they belong. They are draggled-tailed looking
creatures, and some are not unlike the hags in Macbeth. They keep
their eyes constantly on the ground, glancing along the gutters of
the street with amazing rapidity; and, considering how old they are,
it is surprising how quickly they discern the objects of their
search. They usually carry a coarse dirty bag, into which they put
promiscuously every little bit of linen or woollen rag, string, bone,
or iron, which they may be fortunate enough to discover in the mud.
The little heaps of dust, swept out by shop-boys from behind the
counters, are constant mines of treasure, they are sure to find among
them something to reward their pains. These singular "snappers up of
trifles" are a terror and a mystery to every schoolboy, and they
often form the subject of conversation among the junior classes. Many
are the traditions current in such places about these mysterious
beings. It is said, that a boy, observing one of these thrifty souls
busy gathering up something in the streets, and, dying to learn the
wonders of her craft, made a sudden snatch at her bag, when out
tumbled filth and refuse of all description; dirty rags; bones too
stale for even dogs to pick; an old shoe; a dead cat; a part of an
iron hoop; sundry lumps of fat; shreds of cloth; horse-shoe nails;
bits of hempen cord; fragments of coal; pieces of wood, and a
catalogue of sundry articles too numerous to mention. Yet these
things, thrown away as useless, and thus gathered up, have their
value; and many are known to obtain their livelihood in London by
these morning gleanings An old woman, an eccentric character, who may
be seen almost every morning rambling about the squares, north of
Holborn, is said to have amassed a considerable sum of money in this
way; true is it, that one-half of the world knows not how the other
half lives.

     One October evening, a few years ago, a dirty, ragged, miserable
looking, little old man, entered the shop of Mr. James, a broker, in
High Street, Gravesend. He wished to know if Mr. James had any
objection to receive him as a lodger. He had lived, he said, for many
years in Crown Court—certainly not one of the most cheerful, nor
respectable localities of the town. His request was complied with,
and he took immediate pos. session of his room, expressing himself
much pleased with the accommodation. I short time after he had
retired to rest, he was taken ill. The symptoms assumed a serious
aspect, and two medical men were sent for.-Upon their arrival, Mr.
James was informed that his lodger was dying—nothing could save the
old man—his end was inevitable; they communicated this sad news
quietly to the patient, who immediately ordered an attorney to be
sent for. Those around his bed were surprised, for the old man
certainly did not look as if he had anything to leave. The attorney,
however, was speedily in attendance, the old man raised himself in
the bed. "I bequeath," said he, "to my daughter one hundred and fifty
pounds, and forty pounds to each of my nephews." The attorney
inquired if he had a wife. "No," replied he, "but I have two
brothers, and another daughter, who have all behaved very ill towards
me; and I shall leave them nothing." When asked to whom he would
leave the residue of his property, should there be any; he replied,
to Mr. James as a return for his kindness and humanity. At the same
time he handed to the attorney a paper parcel, which, on opening,
proved to contain securities for upwards of eight hundred pounds in
the Bank of England. He died the next morning. It was fortunate for
Mr. James that he did not despise the dirty and shabby looking old
man. He had received him kindly, and his politeness won for him five
hundred sovereigns, which was the amount remaining after all the
legacies were paid. This singular character, who was seventy-five
years of age at his death, had gathered together much of his money by
collecting bits of bone and rag, which he had often been seen to pick
up in the streets, and put into his pocket.



CHAPTER III: TRADITIONARY RECOLLECTIONS OF JOHN OVERS, THE SOUTHWARK
MISER.

John Overs, the Ferryman—His reputed Parsimony and Avarice—The
Miser's Pretty Daughter—Romantic Tale of her Love Adventures—Black
Puddings and provender for the Kitchen—His stratagem to save a Meal—
He feigns Death; his Servants' rejoicings thereupon—Its Fatal
Results—His Burial—Mary Overs and her Lover—Her Misfortunes—Her
Retirement from the World, and her Foundation of St. Mary Overs,
Southwark.

     JOHN OVERS was a miser, living in the old days when Popery
flourished, and friars abounded in England. Some of his vices and
eccentricities have been chronicled in a little tract of great
rarity, entitled "The True History of the Life and Death of John
Overs, and of his Daughter Mary, who caused the Church of St. Mary
Overs to be Built." But in giving the particulars of his life, we do
not vouch for their authenticity: the tract resembles too strongly a
chap book to bear the marks of honest truth; yet the anecdotes are
amusing, and the tradition of the miser's pretty daughter reads
somewhat romantic.

     John Overs was a Southwark ferryman, and he obtained, by paying
an annual sum to the city authorities, a monopoly in the trade of
conveying passengers across the river. He soon grew rich, and became
the master of numerous servants and apprentices. From his first
increase of wealth, he put his money out to use on such profitable
terms, that he rapidly amassed a fortune almost equal to that of the
first nobleman in the land; yet, notwithstanding this speedy
accumulation of wealth, in his habits, housekeeping, and expenses, he
bore the appearance of the most abject poverty, and was so eager
after gain, that even in his old age, and when his body had become
weak by unnecessary deprivations, he would labour incessantly, and
allow himself no rest or repose. This most miserly wretch it is said,
had a daughter, remarkable both for her piety and beauty; the old
man, in spits of his parsimonious habits, retained some affection for
his child, and bestowed upon her a somewhat liberal education.

     Mary Overs had no sympathy with the avarice and selfishness of
her parent: she grew up endowed with amiability, and with a true
maiden's heart to love. As she approached womanhood, her dazzling
charms attracted numerous suiters; but the miser refused all
matrimonial offers, and even declined to negotiate the matter on any
terms, although some of wealth and rank were willing to wed with the
ferryman's daughter. Mary was kept a close prisoner, and forbidden to
bestow her smiles upon any of her admirers, nor were any allowed to
speak with her; but love and nature will conquer bolts and bars, as
well as fear; and one of her suitors took the opportunity, whilst the
miser was busy picking up his penny fares, to get admitted to her
company. The first interview pleased well; another was granted and
arranged, which pleased still better; and a third ended in a mutual
plighting of their troths. During all these transactions at home, the
silly old ferryman was still busy with his avocation, not dreaming
but that things were as secure on land, as they were on water.

     John Overs was of a disposition so wretched and miserly, that he
even begrudged his servants their necessary food. He used to buy
black puddings, which were then sold in London at a penny a yard; and
whenever he gave them their allowance, he used to say, "There, you
hungry dogs, you will undo me with eating." He would scarcely allow a
neighbour to obtain a light from his candle, lest he should in some
way impoverish him by taking some of its light. He used to go to
market to search for bargains: he bought the siftings of the coarsest
meal, looked out eagerly for marrow-bones that could be purchased for
a trifle, and scrupled not to convert them into soup if they were
mouldy. He bought the stalest bread, and he used to cut it into
slices, "that, taking the air, it might become the harder to be
eaten." Sometimes he would buy meat so tainted, that even his dog
would refuse it; upon which occasions, he used to say that it was a
dainty cur, and better fed than taught, and then eat it himself. He
needed no cats, for all the rats and mice voluntarily left his house,
as nothing was cast aside from which they could obtain a picking.

     It is said that this sordid old man resorted, one day, to a most
singular stratagem, for the purpose of saving a day's provision in
his establishment. He counterfeited illness, and pretended to die; he
compelled his daughter to assist in the deception, much against her
inclination. Overs imagined, that like good Catholics, his servants
would not be so unnatural as to partake of food whilst his body was
above ground, but would lament his loss, and observe a rigid fast;
when the day was over, he intended to feign a sudden recovery. He was
laid out as dead, and wrapt in a sheet; a candle was placed at his
head, in accordance with the Popish custom of the age. His
apprentices were informed of their master's death; but, instead of
manifesting grief, they gave vent to the most unbounded joy; hoping,
at last, to be released from their hard and penurious servitude. They
hastened to satisfy themselves of the truth of this joyful news, and
seeing him laid out as dead, could not even restrain their feelings
in the presence of death, but actually danced and skipped around the 
corpse; tears or lamentations they had none; and as to fasting, an
empty belly admits of no delay. In the ebullition of their joy, one
ran into the kitchen, and breaking open the cupboard, brought out the
bread; another ran for the cheese, and brought it forth in triumph;
and a third drew a flagon of ale. They all sat down in high glee,
congratulating and rejoicing among themselves, at having been so
unexpectedly released from their bonds of servitude. Hard as it was,
the bread rapidly disappeared; they indulged in huge slices of
cheese, even ventured to cast aside the parings, and to take copious
draughts of the miser's ale. The old man lay all this time struck
with horror at this awful prodigality, and enraged at their mutinous
disrespect: flesh and blood—at least, the flesh and blood of a miser—
could endure it no longer; and starting up he caught hold of the
funeral taper, determined to chastise them for their waste. One of
them seeing the old man struggling in his sheet, and thinking it was
the devil or a ghost, and becoming alarmed, caught hold of the butt
end of a broken oar, and at one blow struck out his brains! "Thus,"
says the tradition, "he who thought only to counterfeit death,
occasioned it in earnest; and the law acquitted the fellow of the
act, as he was the prime cause of his own death." The daughter's
lover, hearing of the death of old Overs, hastened up to London with
all possible speed; but riding fast, his horse unfortunately threw
him, just as he was entering the city, and broke his neck. This, with
her father's death, had such an effect on the spirits of Mary Overs,
that she was almost frantic, and being troubled with a numerous train
of suitors, she resolved to retire into a nunnery, and to devote the
whole of her wealth, which was enormous, to purposes of charity and
religion. She laid the foundation of "a famous church, which at her
own charge was finished, and by her dedicated to the Virgin Mary."
This, tradition says, was the origin of St. Mary Overs, Southwark, a
name which it received in memory of its beautiful, but unfortunate
foundress.

     On an old sepulchre, in St. Saviour's church, may be seen to
this day, reclining in no very easy posture, the figure of a poor, 
emaciated, looking being; which rumour has declared to be the figure
of John Overs, the ferryman. There is not much to warrant the
conclusion, except, perhaps, the similarity which the mind might
discover in the stone effigy; and the aspect with which, in idea, we
instinctively endow all such objects of penury. The figure looks thin
enough for a man who lived on the pickings of stale bones, and musty
bread, it must be allowed; and the countenance certainly looks
miserly enough for any miser; but then the marble tablet above merely
tells the passer by, that the body of one William Emerson lieth
there, "who departed out of this life," one day in June, in the year
1575.

     The curious little tract, from which we have gleaned many of the
above particulars, gives a very different account of the miser's
burying-place. On account, it is said, of his usury, extortion, and
the general sordidness of his life, he had been excommunicated, and
refused Christian burial; but the daughter, by large sums of money,
endeavoured to bribe the friars of Bermondsey Abbey, to get him
buried. As my lord abbot happened to be away from home, the holy
brothers took the money, and buried him within the cloister. The
abbot on his return seeing a new grave, inquired who, in his absence,
had been buried there; and on being informed, he ordered it to be
immediately disinterred, and be laid on the back of an ass; then
muttering some benediction, or, perhaps, an anathema, he turned the
beast from the abbey gates. "The ass went with a solemn pace,
unguided by any, through Kent Street, till it came to St. Thomas-a-
Watering, which was then the common execution place; and then shook
him off, just under the gallows, where a grave was instantly made,
and, without any ceremony he was tumbled in, and covered with earth."



CHAPTER IV: SOME ACCOUNT OF THE "GREAT" AUDLEY.

"The Way to be Rich"—A curious Biography of a Miser in the Days of
the Commonwealth—Large Savings from Little Earnings—The Cunning of
Avarice—A Warning to Drowning Men not to catch at Straws—An Usurer's
Schemes and Plots—Fast Young Men of the Commonwealth—The Hypocrisy of
Avarice.

     AUDLEY was a celebrated miser of the time of the Stewarts; he
amassed his wealth during the reign of the first Charles, and
flourished amazingly under the protectorate of Cromwell. His life is
displayed by an unknown author, in a tract quaintly entitled the "Way
to be Rich, according to the practice of the Great Audley, who began
with two hundred pounds in the year 1605, and died worth four hundred
thousand pounds this instant, November, 1662." The volume is scarce;
and like many scarce volumes, is very insipid in style, and very
prosy in detail; but we have thought it worthwhile to briefly sketch
his habits, and thrifty schemes. Audley was originally a clerk, with
only six shillings a week salary, and yet out of this scanty sum he
managed to save more than half. His dinner seldom cost him anything,
for he generally made some excuse to dine with his master's clients;
and as to his other meals, a crust of bread or a dry biscuit, was
regarded as fare sufficient after an ample dinner. In one
circumstance he was somewhat different from other misers; he was
clean, if not neat in his outward appearance, but he was thus
scrupulous in his apparel from principle; for Audley often asserted,
that to be thrifty it was necessary to pay some respect to such
matters. He was remarkably industrious, even when a young man. At an
age when others were seeking pleasure, he was busy in lending out,
and increasing his early savings. He was always ready to work when
the usual hours of business were over, and would willingly sit up the
whole night to obtain some trifling remuneration. He was never above
soliciting trifles, and touching his hat to his master's clients. Bo
rigid was he in his economy, and so usurious in his dealings, that in
four years, during which time however he had never received more than
a salary of six or eight shillings a week, he managed to save and
amass five hundred pounds. The salary of the remaining years of his
apprenticeship he sold for sixty, and after awhile, having made up
six hundred pounds in all, he lent the whole to a nobleman for an
annuity of ninety-six pounds for nineteen years, which annuity was
secured upon property producing eight hundred a year. The nobleman
soon died, and his heir neglected to pay the annuity. Audley had
execution upon the property, and by legal trickery, in which he was
well versed, he managed to obtain, in the way of fines and
forfeitures, about four thousand pounds profit upon his original six
hundred.

     His master being one of the clerks of the Compter, Audley had
many opportunities of practising his disreputable cunning; and of
obtaining vast sums by deluding insolvent debtors, and in deceiving
their creditors. He would buy bad debts for a mere trifle, and
afterwards compound with the poor insolvent. One instance of his
avarice and villainy is so curious, that we cannot refrain from
giving the anecdote to our readers. A tradesman named Miller
unfortunately got into arrears with his merchant, whose name was
White. Many fruitless applications were made for the debt, and at
last Miller was sued by the merchant for the sum of two hundred
pounds. He was unable to meet the demand, and was declared insolvent.
Audley goes to White, and offers him forty pounds for the debt, which
the merchant gladly accepts. He then goes to Miller, and undertakes
to obtain his quittance of the debt for fifty pounds, upon condition
that he entered into a bond to pay for the accommodation. The
drowning man catches at a straw, and the insolvent, with many
protestations of thanks, eagerly signs a contract which, without
consideration, he regarded as one so light, and so easy, in its
terms, as to satisfy him that the promptings of benevolence, and
friendship, could alone actuate his voluntary benefactor. The
contract was, that he should pay to Audley some time within twenty
years from that time, one penny progressively doubled, on the first
day of twenty consecutive months; and in case he failed to fulfil
these easy terms, he was to pay a fine of five hundred pounds. Thus
acquitted of his debt of two hundred pounds, Miller arranged with the
rest of his creditors, and again commenced business. Fortune turned,
and he participated liberally in her smiles. Every month added
largely to his trade, and at last he became firmly established. Two
or three years after signing the almost forgotten contract, Miller
was accosted one fine morning in October by old Audley, who politely
demanded the first instalment of the agreement. With a smile, and
many renewed expressions of thankfulness, the hopeful tradesman paid
his penny. On the first of the succeeding month Audley again called,
and demanded twopence, and was as politely satisfied as before. On
the first of December, he received a groat; the first of February,
one shilling and four pence. Still Miller did not see through the
artifice, but paid him with a gracious smile; perhaps, however, there
was something cynical in the look of Audley as he left the shop this
time, for the poor tradesman's suspicions were aroused, and he put
his pen to paper, as he ought to have done years before, to ascertain
the amount of his subsequent payments. Reader, what think you would
have been the amount of the payment due on the first of the twentieth
month? What BUM, think ye, the little penny had become? No less than
two thousand one hundred and eighty pounds! And what was the
aggregate amount of all these twenty monthly payments? Why, the
enormous sum of four thousand three hundred and sixty-six pounds,
eleven shillings, and three pence! It sounds incredulous, but if you
think it a fable, do as Miller did, and reckon for yourselves. Of
course Miller refused the payment of his bond, and forfeited five
hundred pounds by the benevolence and charity of the miser.

     Such is a single instance of the cunning of avarice as
displayed, on many occasions, by this miser. His whole life was one
of trickery and disreputable craft. His schemes of villainy were so
intricate, and his deceptions so subtle, that few could discover
their purpose, or tread the labyrinth of his plot. By means of a set
of clerks, as disreputable as himself, he became known to the gay
gallants of the day as a professed money-lender. "Nor were," says his
anonymous biographer, "the youngsters so needy; as Audley was ready
to feed them with money, sometimes with a covetous violence forcing
upon them more than they desired." Of course always providing that
the security was substantial, and the "consideration" dazzling. Of
all the lawyers who disgraced their profession, there was never one
so disreputable as Audley—there was never usurer so usurious—never a
creditor so unrelenting; and there never was one whose craft wrought
the ruin of so many unfortunate, but honest men. As the cunning
spider before he crawls from his hiding-place to pounce upon his
hapless prey, allows it to attempt an escape, that it may be
exhausted by fruitless struggles, and become entwined more securely
within the snare; lest the sudden appearance of his own ugly self
should terrify his victim into some burst of momentary violence, by
which he would rend the frail fabric of his net, and escape the
flimsy designs of his destroyer. So, did this wretch of avarice,
entice the extravagant into acts of still greater profligacy, that he
might seam them more entirely within his meshes, before he allowed
them to fathom his dastardly schemes of ruin, and his plans of deep
and accomplished villainy. He would secure himself by bonds and
mortgages on magnificent estates, and would do all he could to
encourage the thoughtless borrower in a vicious course of life. He
never refused to "advance," and was always ready to proffer his
advice.

     The "fast" young gentlemen of the day, who wore high boots,
slouched hats, and gaudy swords, thought him "a good sort of fellow,"
for he had always money to gratify their desires, and to keep up the
game. It is often the case, that they who glory in having "seen the
world," and who seem to imagine that they have gained much, by
peeping beneath the veil of vice, are the most easily deceived; and,
instead of becoming wise by their experience, remain the merest
simpletons on earth, to be fleeced by every knave, with a common
share of cunning, and to be deceived by the smooth-tongued hypocrisy
of every villain, who will call himself their friend. Thus it was,
that old Audley found his gay customers obsequious in their obedience
to his wishes, and always thankful for his advice. He generally
advised his debtors to sell, before they borrowed too much, the
straggling parts of their estates; assuring them that they would
scarcely be sensible of such sales. "These he would buy of them at
half their value; so that the feathers would buy the goose, and the
wood pay for the ground; and when the poor gentleman had, with his
money, stopped one gap, by prodigality he would open another. O! how
the principal, the use, the compound interest, swell the debt, to an
incredible sum, until half the estate was sold; and then the old man
knew that when half the estate was gone, the gentleman would live as
if he enjoyed the whole, and though he abated his possessions, he
abated not in expenses; how subtly would he let his debts grow on,
until they became a considerable sum. Gentlemen could not be more
careless to pay, than he was willing to continue the debt, knowing
that, Bonds, like infants, battle best with sleeping."

     This old sinner was a great hypocrite, and, with all his
villainy, made some outward show of piety. "He took care," says his
biographer, "to accompany himself, to his dying day, with some grave
and reverend divine, from whom, if he gained not piety, he gained the
reputation of it. He would have, in his chamber, upon the table, a
large bible, and Bishop Andrews' Sermons; and if you surprised him
not, you might find him busy with one of these books, but if you came
suddenly, he was in his closet."



CHAPTER V: MISERS—THEIR HABITS, SCHEMES, AND VICES.

Turner, a Miser, mentioned by Pope—Sir James Lowther and the
suspicious halfpenny—A Warning to the Avaricious, in the horrible
Death of Foscue, the Miser—Richard Child, the Miser of Colsall—
Illustrations of Acquisitiveness, and the love of Hoarding—John
Little, the Miser, of Kentish Town—Anecdote of Sir Thomas Colby—Life
and Death of Vandille, the Miser of Paris—The rich Sir William Smyth,
and Taylor the Oculist—A Miser starved by his own Parsimony—John
Mounsey, of Patrickdale—Difficulties of making a Will—Better go to
Prison than not save, or Anecdotes of Ben Pope, the Miser—Dick
Jarret, the Miser, of Rye—Augustine Partheny, the Dublin Miser; his
singular Scheme to save, after Death—Clerical Avarice, or the
reverend Miser of Blewbury—How to Repair old Garments, and make Two
Ends meet.

     Facts are more conclusive than conjecture, and to enable our
readers to behold the manifestations of avarice, we have thrown
together, in our present chapter, an accumulation of anecdotes, which
may amuse, by their eccentricity, and prove instructive, as
illustrations of the workings of the human mind.

     Pope, in his 'Moral Essays,' speaks of a miser, of the name of
Turner, who was worth upwards of three hundred thousand pounds. The
interest on money being reduced from five to four per cent., he
immediately put down his coach, and, discontented with the reduced
interest, he put out seventy thousand pounds to a charitable
corporation, at an advanced rate. The institution failed, and the
miser lost his money, which he took so much to heart, that he kept
his chamber ever afterwards, quite broken down in spirits. His grief,
at this diminution of his fortune, was so intense, that it was
thought he would have sunk under it; but he was heir to a vast
estate, and, in expectation of this fortune, he resorted to the plan
of keeping to his bedchamber, to save his clothes, and other ordinary
expenses. Dr King relates an anecdote of Sir James Lowther, which
exemplifies the meanness of avarice. One day he went into George's
Coffee House, and ordered a dish of coffee; on leaving, he offered a
piece of silver in payment, from which the waiter took twopence, and
gave the knight the change in coppers. He was then helped into his
chariot, for he was very old and infirm, and drove away. Some days
after, he returned to the same coffee house, to acquaint the woman
who kept it, that she had given him a bad halfpenny, and to demand
another in exchange for it. Sir James had about thirty thousand
pounds per annum, and was at a loss whom to appoint his heir.

     In the year 1762, an extraordinary instance of avarice occurred
in France. A miser, of the name of Foscue, who had amassed enormous
wealth, by the most sordid parsimony, and the most discreditable
extortion, was requested, by the Government, to advance a sum of
money, as a loan. The miser, to whom a fair interest was not
inducement sufficiently strong, to enable him to part with his
treasured gold, declared his incapacity to meet this demand; he
pleaded severe losses, and the utmost poverty. Feeling, however, that
some of his neighbours, among whom he was very unpopular, would
report his immense wealth to the Government, he applied his ingenuity
to discover some effectual way of hiding his gold, should they
attempt to institute a search to ascertain the truth or falsehood of
his plea. With great care and secrecy, he dug a deep cave in his
cellar; to this receptacle for his treasure he descended by a ladder,
and to the trap door he attached a spring lock, so that, on shutting,
it would fasten of itself. By and bye the miser disappeared;
inquiries were made; the house was searched; woods were explored, and
the ponds were dragged; but no Foscue could they find; and gossips
began to conclude that the miser had fled, with his gold, to some
part, where, by living incognito, he would be free from the demands
of the Government. Some time passed on; the house in which he had
lived was sold, and workmen were busily employed in its repair. In
the progress of their work they met with the door of the secret cave,
with the key in the lock, outside. They threw back the door and
descended with a light. The first object upon which the lamp was
reflected, was the ghastly body of Foscue the miser, and scattered
around him were heavy bags of gold, and ponderous chests of untold
treasure; a candlestick lay beside him on the floor. This worshipper
of mammon had gone into his cave, to pay his devoirs to his golden
god, and became a sacrifice to his devotion! What must have been the
sensations of that miserable man—what the horrors of his situation,
when he heard the door close after him, and the spring lock
effectually imprison him within his secret mine! How bitter must have
been the last struggles of that avaricious soul! How terrible must
have been the appeals of conscience within that sordid sinner! How
each bag must have disgorged its treasure, and each piece of gold
have danced, in imagination, around him as a demon! How hated, when
the gnawing pangs of starvation came slowly upon him, must have been
that yellow vision; his very heart must have grown sick, at that,
which he once so dearly loved! Gold in bags; gold in chests; gold
piled in heaps; gold for a pillow; gold strewed upon the ground for
him to lie upon! Whilst his taper lasted, turn where he would his
eyes, nothing met them but his gold. But when the last flicker died
away, and the miser was left in darkness, to dwell upon his coming
death, and upon his many sins, how awful must have been the agonies
of conscience! How, surely, amidst the gloom of that sepulchre of
gold, must the poor whom he had oppressed, and the unfortunate whom
he had ruined by his avarice, have rose up to reproach him; and, when
the mind became fevered by its last deadly struggles, how the faces
of haggard poverty, of hate, and loathing for the miser, must, in.
one loud, discordant chorus, have cried for vengeance and retribution
upon his guilty soul!

     Avarice will sometimes defeat its own aim, and guilt has often
brought its own punishment. Richard Child, the miser of Colsall, who
died in 1772, laid up during the severe dearth which occurred in the
year 1739, upwards of a hundred quarters of wheat which he might then
have sold, at nineteen pounds the load. He would not take less than
twenty; and rather than abate his price he stowed the whole of it
away, thinking that the scarcity would increase, and people gladly
accede to his demand. The miser was disappointed; and for three and
thirty years he had the satisfaction of keeping his corn, and
grumbling over his mistake. When he died, the store was brought out
of the granary. On inspection it was found so damaged by vermin and
time, that only seventeen, out of upwards of one hundred quarters,
were at all fit for use; and these were sold at Uxbridge market for
eleven guineas the load. But had the miser lived still longer, he
would rather have let his corn decay than have sold it at a loss, or
have distributed it in purposes of charity.

     The love of hoarding was curiously exemplified in the life of
John Little, the miser of Kentish Town, who died in 1798, having
reached his eighty-fourth year. He was not only a miser but a
lumberer of useless trash. He gratified his mania to acquire, without
regarding the utility or intrinsic value of the things which he
amassed; and we can discover no motive in his accumulations but the
mere gratification of the promptings of acquisitiveness. After his
death, one hundred and seventy-three pairs of breeches, besides a
numerous collection of other antiquated and useless articles of
wearing apparel were found in a room which had been kept locked for
many years. One hundred and eighty musty old wigs, of all shapes and
sizes, yellow, black, and grey, were found stowed away in the coach-
house; these he had been many years collecting, and some were left to
him as legacies by his friends. So great was Little's antipathy to
the married state, which he regarded as totally opposed to all
thrifty measures, that he discarded his brother, his only relative,
because he had ventured to take unto himself a wife: so violent was
his resentment at this extravagant act, that he never afterwards
spoke to him. His avarice overwhelmed all nobler feelings, and it was
by his distrust and suspicion of others that he became instrumental
in his own death. His physician had ordered him to drink a glass of
wine occasionally; the miser refused for a length of time to accede
to this most extravagant remedy—not that it would require any
immediate expenditure of cash, for his cellars were well stored with
hoarded wine—wine which had become luscious in its repose, and
priceless from its antiquity. But the thought of separating his store
lacerated the very sinews of his heart; and it was not until he was
laid on a bed of sickness, and found that his physical strength was
sinking fast, that he was induced to comply. But so distrustful was
the sordid avarice of his nature, that he feared to entrust his own
housekeeper with the key of his wine-cellar; and insisted upon being
carried down, when he would take out one bottle, and relock the door.
The miser grew worse, yet he still insisted upon following this
course: one day being taken from his warm bed into the damp and humid
vault, he was seized with a shivering fit, which, terminating in an
apoplectic stroke, occasioned his death. Sir Thomas Colby, an
avaricious soul, mentioned by Dr. King in his "Anecdotes of his Own
Time," met with his death in a somewhat similar manner. He lived at
Kensington, and was a commissioner in the Victualling Office. One
night feeling indisposed he took some medicine, which had the effect
of throwing him into a profuse perspiration; all at once, in the
middle of the night, it struck him that he had left the key of the
cellar on the table of his sitting room; and apprehensive that his
servants might visit his store, and rob him of a bottle of wine, he
arose from the bed, went down in the dark to search for the key,
found it, and returned to his chamber; never again to pass its
threshold but as a corpse. He died intestate, and left more than two
hundred thousand pounds in the funds, which was shared among five or
six day labourers who were his nearest kinsmen, but whom he had
perhaps never seen.

     Vandille is one of the most remarkable characters, as a miser,
that is to be found among the eccentric biographers of France. His
riches were immense, and his avarice and parsimony extreme. If it is
a true saying that money begets money, it is also a true saying that
riches beget avarice. This abject slave to Mammon, to avoid noise and
to discourage visits, hired a miserable garret in one of the most
obscure parts of Paris. He paid a poor woman a sous a day to wait
upon him. Excepting once a week, his diet was never varied; bread and
milk for breakfast; the same for dinner and the same for supper all
the week round. On a Sunday he ventured to indulge in a glass of sour
wine, and he strove to satisfy the compunctions of conscience by
bestowing, in amity, a farthing every Sabbath. This munificence,
which incurred an expenditure of one shilling and a penny per annum,
he carefully noted down; and just before his death he found, with
some degree of regret, that during his life he had disbursed no less
than forty-three shillings and fourpence. Forty-three shillings and
fourpence! prodigious generosity for the richest man in France!
Vandille had been a magistrate at Boulogne, and whilst in that office
he partly maintained himself, free of cost, by constituting himself
milk-taster general at the market. He would munch his scrap of bread,
and wash it down with these gratuitous draughts. By such parsimonious
artifices, and a most penurious course of life, he succeeded in
amassing an enormous fortune, and was in a position to lend vast sums
of money to the French government. When he had occasion to journey
from Boulogne to Paris, he avoided the expense of coach-fare by
proceeding on foot; and lest he should be robbed, he never carried
more than threepence in his pocket, although he had a distance of a
hundred and thirty miles before him. If he found this sum
insufficient, he would profess poverty, and beg from the passengers
on the road a trifle to help him on.

     In the year 1735, Vandille, the miser, was worth nearly eight
hundred thousand pounds! He used to boast that this vast accumulation
sprang from a single shilling. He had increased it, step by step,
farthing by farthing, shilling by shilling, and pound by pound, from
the age of sixteen to the age of seventy-two. For six and fifty years
had that covetous old man for no other purpose than to accumulate
gold which he had not the courage to enjoy. Not once during those
years had he indulged himself in any luxury, or participated in any
pleasure; his life was one continuous sacrifice to mammon. The
blessings which a kind and benevolent providence has bestowed in his
mercy upon mankind, were never accepted by Vandille; his whole soul
was absorbed; his every joy was sought for in the yellow heap, which
his avarice had accumulated. His death was a singular one; the end of
that man was a terrible lesson, and one from which a fearful moral
may be drawn. The winter of the year 1734, had been very cold and
bitter, and the miser felt inclined to purchase a little extra fuel
in the summer time, to provide, to some extent, against the like
severity in the ensuing winter. He heard a man pass the street with
wood to sell; he haggled for an unconscionable time about the price,
and at last completed his bargain, at the lowest possible rate.
Avarice had made the miser dishonest, and he stole from the poor
woodman several logs. In his eagerness to carry them away, and hide
his ill-gotten store, he overheated his blood, and produced a fever.
For the first time in his life he sent for a surgeon. "I wish to be
bled," said he; "what is your charge?" "Half a livre," was the reply.
The demand was deemed extortionate, and the surgeon was dismissed. He
then sent for an apothecary but he was also considered too high; and
he at last sent for a poor barber, who agreed to open the vein for
threepence a time. "But friend," said the cautious miser, "how often
will it be requisite to bleed me?" "Three times," replied the barber.
"Three times!" and pray what quantity of blood do you intend to take
from me at each operation?" "About eight ounces each time," was the
answer. "Let me see," said the possessor of three-quarters of a
million, "that will be ninepence; too much; too much. I have
determined to go a cheaper way to work; take the whole twenty-four
ounces at once, and that will save me sixpence." The barber
remonstrated, but the miser was firm; he was certain, he said, that
the barber was only desirous to extort an extra sixpence, and he 
would not submit to such scandalous imposition. His vein was opened,
and four-and-twenty ounces of blood were taken from him. In a few
days, Vandille, the miser, was no more. The savings of his life, the
wages of his vice and avarice, he left to the king of France.

     A similar anecdote is related of Sir William Smyth, of
Bedfordshire. He was immensely rich, but most parsimonious and
miserly in his habits. At seventy years of age he was entirely
deprived of his sight, un-able to gloat over his hoarded heaps of
gold; this was a terrible affliction. He was persuaded by Taylor, the
celebrated oculist, to be couched; who was, by agreement, to have
sixty guineas if he restored his patient to any degree of sight.
Taylor succeeded in his operation, and Sir William was enabled to
read and write without the aid of spectacles, during the rest of his
life. But no sooner was his sight restored, than the baronet began.
to regret that his agreement had been for so large a sum; he felt no
joy as others would have felt, but grieved and sighed over the loss
of his sixty guineas! His thoughts were now how to cheat the oculist;
he pretended that he had only a glimmering, and could see nothing
distinctly; for which reason, the bandage on his eyes was continued a
month longer than the usual time. Taylor was deceived by these
misrepresentations, and agreed to compound the bargain, and accepted
twenty guineas instead of sixty. Yet Sir William was an old bachelor,
and had no one to care or provide for. At the time Taylor attended
him, he had a large estate, an immense sum of money in the stocks,
and six thousand pounds in the house.

     In the year 1790, there died in the city of Paris, almost from
starvation, a miser worth one hundred and twenty-five thousand
pounds. Ostervald, the banker, was well known in his day. He was one
of the most acute, and one of the most successful stock-jobbers in
France. He had practised from early life habits of the most pinching
parsimony. Every night he resorted to a tavern, much frequented by
the commercial class, and called for a pint of small beer, for which
he paid three sous; and never, even in his most lucky days, nor when
fortune had been most propitious, did he exceed that expenditure. In
his early days he had practised the same habit; he was always
observed to look eagerly for stray corks; to pick them up from the
floor, or gather them off the table; these he carried home, and
hoarded up. In the course of eight years, he had collected so many,
that he was enabled to sell them for twelve louis d'ors. This was the
foundation of his great fortune, which he accumulated by rigid
parsimony, cunning, and fortunate speculation. When on the bed of
sickness, and near unto his death, the miser could not conquer the
passion of avarice. He was recommended by his doctor to partake of a
little soup every day, to revive his exhausted strength; meat seldom
passed his lips, and he had for years subsisted on bread and milk,
copiously diluted with water. He regarded, therefore, the soup as
extravagance, and the persuasions and importunities of friends were
unavailing. "It is true," said he, "I should not dislike the soup,
but I have no appetite for the meat; what then was to become of
that?" In a few days the miser was a corpse. Around his neck was
discovered a small bag made of silk, containing assignats to the
value of eight hundred thousand livres.

     John Mounsey, of Patrickdale, in the parish of Barton, in
Westmorland, wag a most remarkable miser, and well deserves a place
among our eccentric memoirs. His property was considerable, and the
family mansion, on the lake Ullswater, gave dignity and importance to
the Mounseys. Avarice in John, however, was innate; and from very
early life he gave many manifestations of this ruling passion. Of all
his play-fellows he had the largest property in marbles, and the
greatest sums invested in buttons—he became the vender of these
juvenile species of stock to all his acquaintance—he was the banker
of the school-room, and his exchanges were always carried on upon the
most sound principles of finance. His marbles, as soon as won, by
play, fair or foul, he endeavoured to dispose of, and he gloried in
the accumulation of genuine coin, which his acute and sordid mind
taught him to value before the baubles of the play-ground. Thus
nourished, and thus encouraged in his propensity to acquire, the
youth grew up a wretched votary of avarice. All the usual joys of
vigorous youth were insipid—all the sports of youthful innocence were
distasteful, and all the sanguine hopes, and bright anticipations of
opening manhood, were clouded and warped by his anxious and fevered
pursuit for wealth. At the death of his father, which occurred when
he was a young man, he came in possession of three hundred pounds per
annum; but with this new acquisition of revenue his appetite for gold
increased, rather than diminished. He would employ himself in the
meanest occupations, and in the most laborious labour—he would sleep
in a barn to save the cost of a tavern bed, and he presented, in his
outward appearance, one of the most miserable objects of wretchedness
and filth; indeed, to look upon him was to learn how deplorable and
sinful were the consequences of that grovelling lust which guide the
actions of the miser, and transform the noble image of man into the
semblance of a brute. His coat was patched with pieces of dirty
cloth, and his stockings with fragments of refuse leather, which he
had been fortunate enough to meet with in his rambles. He wore
wooden-shoes, thickly shod with iron, and an old hat without brim or
nap; if he had particular business to transact from home, which
required a more decent appearance, he borrowed a few clothes of a
friend. One day whilst ferrying a load of wood down the lake with his
man Pearson, he displayed the fortitude of his avarice. A violent
storm arose—the winds blew a hurricane—the rain came down in
torrents, and well nigh sunk the boat; and thunder and lightning
filled their hearts with terror. The boat was in danger, but to throw
their cargo overboard was too great a sacrifice, and an act of waste
to which no miser could submit; rather than do so, for two days and
two nights he braved the storm; neither danger, nor cold, nor hunger,
nor the entreaties of his companion, could persuade him to relieve
the boat of its weight. On the third day, the storm abated, and, with
the assistance of some peasantry, they landed in safety. Mounsey was
so penurious that his whole expenses did not exceed twenty or thirty
pounds per annum; although he was proprietor of land which produced
him eight hundred pounds per annum. To guard against robbers, he was
in the habit of hiding his money in old stone walls; his visits to
the place at which he was wont to secrete large sums, excited, on one
occasion, the suspicions of an old woman, who, when he had left,
commenced a diligent search of the wall; stone after stone she
loosened and replaced, but no success rewarded her industry. She
determined, however, to discover by stratagem what she could not find
by labour. When the raiser the next day approached the wall, she
tumbled a quantity of stones about, and ran off, pretending she had
discovered the hidden treasure. The trick was successful, and the
alarmed miser ran after her to beg and implore her to return the
gold; he even offered her half if she would return the rest. The old
woman was now convinced that the money was hid near the place of her
recent search; and before the miser could recover from his
consternation she returned, and, pulling out a few more stones,
discovered a bag of gold, which she carried off in triumph.

     A horse was considered too expensive to maintain, although
Mounsey was constantly requiring one on his estate. He endeavoured to
avoid so much extravagance by joining with a neighbour in the
purchase of a nag; the partners, however, soon quarrelled, for when
the poor animal was employed by Mounsey, he usually fasted throughout
the day. Turnpike gates, too, were always avoided to save the toll,
and tedious and circuitous routes added to the fatigues of the day;
the horse grew like the rider, and every rib could have been
accurately counted. Mounsey always walked with his eyes upon the
ground in search of old rags and refuse. One day as he was riding to
Penrith Market, by the Banks of Ullswater, he made a sudden stop—got
off the back of his redoubtable nag—stripped himself, and walked into
the lake to pull out an old dirty stocking, which he had observed
through the limpid waters, lying at the bottom of the stream. In one
of the last acts of his life, that of making his will, he was equally
parsimonious. He bargained with a poor schoolmaster, of the name of
Wilson, to write this document for tenpence; but alterations were so
frequent that the village pedagogue remonstrated upon the lowness of
the price, and the miser munificently offered to raise the sum to a
shilling; the scribe, however, demanded half-a-crown, which was
deemed so exorbitant that Mounsey employed another person. The
dictating of a will is a hard thing for such men as John Mounsey, the
allotting and parcelling out of that for which they have sacrificed
all social com-forts, and ail domestic joys; for which they have
dark-ened their lives, and perilled their souls in the world to come,
is a hard and bitter task. It is like signing a warrant for one's own
death—it is like squeezing blood from a heart of stone—a thing almost
as difficult. The miser has found it impossible to part with his gold
in life, and now he can scarcely gather up the courage to bequeath it
in death. He seems to be relaxing the tenacity of his holding when he
consents to devise and bequeath. He groans at every item of the
ominous document, and would strive, as it were, to reserve some
portion of his wealth for the time when wealth can no longer avail,
and when gold can no longer impart delight.
"I give, I devise," old Euclio said
And sighed, "My lands and tenements to Ned."
"Your money sir?" "My money, sir! What! all?
"Why if I must (then wept) I give to Paul."
"The manor, sir?" "The manor! hold!" he cried.
"Not that—I cannot part with that"—and died!
POPE

     Mounsey's son, who did not inherit the propensity of
acquisitiveness from his father, but who retained a generous and
noble heart, in spite of his niggardly education, and the pernicious
examples and sordid admonitions which his parent had endeavoured to
instil into his mind, advised the miser to leave two hundred pounds
to the poor. "No," he said; "he had lost a great deal by the poor,
but he never got anything from them in his life. Why, therefore,
should he leave anything to them?" The son remonstrated with his
dying father, and spoke of his duty as a Christian. "Well," said he
at last to his only son, who was his sole heir and ex-ecutor, "I will
leave one hundred pounds, if you will pay fifty!" Thus, with death
before him, did the habits of the miser appear. He died on the 15th
of October, 1793, after a long life of two and ninety years. His last
words were words of regret that he could not live longer to grow
richer!

     Social comforts are willingly sacrificed, and corporeal
deprivations are cheerfully borne, by the miser, if the sacrifice and
deprivation tend to advance the great object of his life, and help to
gratify his propensity to save. It is more easy for the miser to
endure imprisonment than to part with his gold. Old Ben Pope, the
miser, of Southwark, who was supposed to be worth seventy thou-sand
pounds, was fined for some nefarious money trans-actions with Sir
Alexander Leith—ten thousand pounds by way of damages. To evade the
fine, Benjamin went to France, but afterwards returned to England,
and resolved to show his resentment by going into the Fleet. For
eleven years and three months he suffered imprisonment with
philosophy and patience. At one time, his creditor was willing to
compound, and tendered him his liberty for a thousand pounds; but
Pope refused even this offer: he would rather die, he told them, than
submit to such extortion. He carried, during his imprisonment, his
habits of parsimony to the utmost extreme, seldom partaking of
anything superior to a hard crust and an atom of the rind of cheese.
A joint of meat was never known to have graced his table. On one
memorable occasion, it was remarked that he indulged himself in a
fourpenny plate of meat from the cookshop; but the indulgence was
never afterwards repeated. Water was his usual beverage; but every
other day, to sustain what little strength he had, he purchased a
pint of beer, never omitting, before he paid for it, to examine well
the measure, to ascertain that it was full: if, when the froth had
disappeared, the liquor was not level with the brim, he would storm
and haggle for an hour. He used to purchase a three farthing candle,
but he would not complete his purchase unless the vendor would allow
him to choose one himself from the box; and he used to chuckle to
himself, when he was so fortunate as to find one a little thicker
than the rest. After a life of sixty-seven years, the greatest
portion of which had been spent in penury and misery like this, he
died in prison worth seventy thousand pounds. The old inhabitants of
Rye still re-member Dick Jarret, the miser. He was one of those
greedy and covetous souls that would scruple to take two sixpences
for a shilling, lest by any chance he should lose by the exchange. He
lived by himself he never had the heart to love, nor the courage to
marry. His diet was of the poorest and most comfortless description;
and he grumbled in his old age at the hardness of the times,
complaining that formerly his expenditure never exceeded six pounds
per annum, but that latterly, on account of the dearness of
provision, his household and other expenses had cost thirteen pounds
per annum. His dress corresponded with these wretched habits: any one
could recognise in him the victim of a sordid avarice. At his death,
he had in his cellar some wine, which had been made for his
christening seventy years before, he had never ventured to partake of
it during his life, but left it for his relatives to make merry over
at his funeral. He died in the year 1806, worth ten thousand pounds:
his hoards might, perhaps, have exceeded that amount, for it is
doubtful whether his hidden treasures were all discovered at the
time—three hundred guineas were found under a brick in the floor, and
notes were discovered in unsuspected crevices.

     For our next illustration of the passion of avarice, we would
refer to the life of Augustine Partheny, the Dublin miser. He was
originally a journeyman cooper; but, when a young man, he
relinquished his trade, and took a voyage to the West Indies, in
company with his maternal uncle. Both uncle and nephew were of a
plodding, parsimonious, disposition. The uncle made a fortune, and
the nephew returned home with a tolerable share of riches, but with a
discontented mind. His acquisitiveness had been excited: the
possession of a little only fed the desire for more: he neither used
nor enjoyed what he had; still, the promptings of avarice were strong
within him, and he again left his county to seek in Antigua and Santa
Cruz for fresh accumulations. His voyage was eminently successful,
and he again returned home to lock up and to unlock—to count over and
to pile up—to admire and to gloat upon his heaps of gold. But
although he possessed one of the largest fortunes in Dublin, he was
one of the most wretched objects of penury. In his person he was
dirty and unprepossessing; and in his temper he was morose and
scurrilous. He was never known to have bestowed praise upon others,
and no one could ever boast of his friendship. 'The lust for gold,
and the constant worshipping of his wealth, had effectually closed
his heart to all human sympathies. He was never known to have shed a
tear of sorrow, or to mourn for the death of kindred. He was never
known to utter one word of compassion for the afflicted. He was never
known to have distributed one mite from his crowded coffers in
purposes of charity, and he was never known to have received one
grateful look from the eyes of the sick, nor one honest benison from
the lips of poverty. He sought not for the blessings, and he cared
not for the curses of the poor. He never entered society, but shunned
all intercourse with the world. Of the society of females, he had an
utter abhorrence: with the true principles of rigid parsimony he
looked upon matrimony with affright, and treated all women with
contempt. It is probable that the fair sex entertained a similar
feeling for the miser; for the longer he lived, the deeper he became
rooted in his antipathy to their presence; a result almost
impossible, had they exerted their feminine art to flatter his
vanity, or to tolerate his company. He retained his love of gold in
all its virulence, to the last day of his life; just before his
death, a friendly neighbour sent him a physician, which he did not
appear to dislike, but suddenly recollecting that, probably, the
doctor would demand his fee, he became restless and uncomfortable; he
raised himself in the bed, "Doctor," said he, "I am a strong man, and
know my disorder, but as Mr. Nangle has sent you to my assistance, I
shall not exchange you for any other person, if we can come to terms;
in fact, I wish to know your charge for attendance, until I am
recovered." The physician answered, "eight guineas." "Ah! sir,"
exclaimed the old miser, anxious to make a pinching bargain, "if you
knew my disorder, you would not be so exorbitant; but to put an end
to this discussion, I will give you six guineas and a-half." The
doctor assented, and the patient gave the physician the stipulated
sum. He died in 1811, after a long life of eighty-six years, but
although his relatives were numerous, he did not leave them any part
of his enormous wealth, which at his death amounted to three hundred
thousand pounds. With the exception of four pounds per annum to his
servant, who had been in his employ for four and twenty years, he
bequeathed the whole of his fortune to a rich family in the West
Indies. It was left, however, upon condition that they were to allow
this vast sum to accumulate and improve for fourteen years, before
they received it. Thus, not content with saving during his life, he
was anxious to save after his death, it was a strange consolation for
a dying sinner, that his wealth, the sordid accumulations of his
useless life, should go on increasing long after he had himself
mouldered into dust.

     Who, down at Blewbury, has not heard of the Rev. Mr. Jones,
whose rigid habits of parsimony exceeded even those of the celebrated
John Elwes. This godly miser was curate of Blewbury for forty-five
years. His stipend did not exceed fifty guineas per annum, and yet he
died in 1827 worth many thousands of pounds. He was fortunate enough,
at the death of a relative, to come into the possession of a little
property, which produced him thirty pounds per annum, and which, with
his salary, and the interest of his savings for the previous year, he
always invested in the funds. Upon the fees of his office, which
averaged about half-a-crown a week, he contrived to live; and even
from that scanty allowance has been known to extract a saving of a
few pence. He kept no servant, and never engaged any one to clean his
rooms, or to assist in his domestic concern; he fulfilled himself the
duties of the housemaid, chambermaid, and cook, and officiated as his
own washerwoman and tailor. In appearance he was a walking scarecrow,
and the hat which he had upon his head, and the rags which he had
upon his back, were enough to frighten all the birds in the
neighbourhood. The same hat and coat served him during the whole
forty-five years that he lived at Blewbury. As specimens of industry,
and curious stitching, they were both remarkable articles of wearing
apparel. The brim of his hat on his left side was, by dint of
constant handling, entirely worn off; one day, on coming from Upton,
across the fields, he luckily espied an old hat stuck upon a pole, in
a cornfield, to frighten away the birds; he immediately seized the
prize and despoiled it of its brim, which he sewed on to his own hat
with a piece of twine. It is doubtful, whether the addition was an
improvement, for the new brim was a jet black, whilst the old head
was of a most dingy brown. As to his coat, it was a miracle of art;
if Joseph's coat surpassed it in the variety of its colours, it was
nothing to it in the multiplicity of its patches. There never was a
coat so twisted and turned, so doctored and re-paired, so altered in
its fashion, or so metamorphosed in its shape, as the coat of the
Rev. Mr. Jones. The life of that coat would have been an entertaining
history; it would have taught those who wish to make a surtout, do
double duty, how to achieve their end. When he first went to
Blewbury, it was then the worse for wear, and after some considerable
time, when it had become threadbare, and of the hue of russet, he had
it turned inside out, and converted into a dress coat. This napless
garment soon became dangerously thin, and subject to incessant rents,
and tears, which continually kept its reverend owner employed; it was
the practice of this thrifty curate to borrow needle and thread on
these occasions of the neighbouring farmers, for to have in-vested
any capital in the purchase of such articles, would have been a
serious and weighty consideration. But at last, in spite of all his
care and patching, pieces fell out, and were lost; to repair these
dilapidations, he cut fragments off the tail, and sewed them in
neatly himself. At last, this system of robbing one part to repair
another, became so frequent, and the tails were so reduced, that the
coat became a jacket, and certainly there never was a garment that so
disgraced "the cloth," as that worn by this most reverend miser; old
crones used to envy it as a piece of ingenious patch-work, and
youthful rustics used to wonder, whether it could be Joseph's coat—
grown dingy, and discoloured by time, which the curate would
sometimes tell them about in his morning lesson; indeed, so much
amazement and consternation did the tailless jacket produce, that Mr.
Jones was at last compelled to refrain from appearing in it before
the public eye; but he was constantly decorated in this strange
garment when at home. In other articles of his apparel the curate was
equally parsimonious. He had a great store of new shirts, neatly
folded up, and locked within his drawers; but, with the exception of
one solitary shirt, they were never allowed to part company; when he
had it washed, which was only once in two or three months, he went
about without a shirt at all, rather than take one of the new ones
into use. He always took it off at night, that it might last clean
the longer; and when it became worn, he always mended it himself, and
repaired it on the same plan that he repaired his coat; the
consequences were of course the same; the shirt became tailless, and
no longer reached down to his knees. Sorely was the reverend miser
tempted to disturb his hoarded linen, and to take a new one into use;
but after a diligent search, he found in one of his drawers the top
of a shirt, with a frill on, which had lain by ever since his gay and
youthful days; this, with his usual sagacity, he tacked into the old
shirt, with the frill hanging downwards, which embellished that
useful garment with a novel and elegant appearance. In his diet Mr.
Jones was as singular and as penurious as in his dress. On a Saturday
he purchased the food which was to last him during the ensuing week,
and he cooked the whole of his provisions on the Sunday. His meals
were never varied, and he never purchased but three articles, bread,
bacon, and tea, which he used to term two necessaries, and one
luxury. This was invariably his diet all the year round; if his bread
became dry, or his bacon "cupboardy," it was all the same; he rather,
in fact, encouraged within himself a dislike for his meals, because
he found it a saving; and it was always his aim to make one week's
allowance, if possible, suffice for two; this he would sometimes
manage by dining gratuitously with a neighbour. It was remarked, that
although he was frequently entertained by his parishioners, only one
person during ten years had ever been known to have sat at his table:
this was a particular friend, and he only obtained a crust of bread,
after much difficulty and importunity. In fact, the larder never
contained anything but bread, and a piece of unsavoury bacon; no
meat, sugar, coffee, cheese, milk, or such class of common
provisions, ever entered his house; yet our parsimonious curate
always manifested the utmost pleasure when he could partake of such
luxuries free of expense. His common beverage was water, and at
breakfast and supper he indulged in a cup of weak tea, unflavoured
with milk or sugar. Few liked a glass of ale more than did the Rev.
Mr. Jones, and yet he never spent but a single sixpence in that
liquor during the whole time that he was curate of Blewbury. The
farmers would occasionally, however, treat him to a glass, which
formerly he used never to refuse; but being invited to a rustic
wedding, about ten years before his death, he drank so freely of
strong ale, and made so many grimaces, and played such unaccountable
tricks for a parson, that the parishioners talked about it for some
days, which so mortified this reverend gentleman, that he made a vow
never to indulge in any stronger drink than his diluted tea; a vow
which, it is said, he piously and scrupulously observed. Mr. Tones
never lit a fire, however cold the weather, except on a Sunday, for
the purpose of cooking his bacon, and brewing his tea; this was
usually one of sticks and rubbish, which he was often seen busily
collecting in the church-yard; he never could persuade himself to use
coal, although he had a shed at the back of his house full of that
article. On cold winter evenings he would beg a seat by the cheerful
fire of a neighbour, and after warming his shivering limbs return,
and immediately get to bed, to keep in the heat. It was one night
returning thus that the old man died, comfortless, and alone; after
having deprived himself of every comfort, and denied himself many of
the necessaries of life, that he might leave thousands to relatives
whom he had never seen.



CHAPTER VI: NOTICES OF JEMMY TAYLOR, THE BOROUGH USURER.

Curious anecdotes of his life—His penurious habits—His tempting
cookery—His companions—The Earl of Northumberland and the money-
lender—His pleasure in hoarding—His first and only act of charity—His
death—Curious epitaph.

     JEMMY TAYLOR, called by his contemporaries the Southwark miser,
was a native of Leicestershire; he was brought up to the trade of a
weaver, but he forsook it for the more lucrative one of stockbroker.
He was an acute and cunning man, and soon became a successful adept
on 'Change. He could fabricate news, spread false reports, excite
distrust, or inspire confidence, with an activity and effect which
many of his brethren would envy, but few could learn to imitate with
similar success. So learned did he become in all the trickery of
'Change, that he grew immensely rich. There is a profound mystery
connected with the Stock Exchange; such matters as interest,
discount, transfers, debentures, bills, shares, and scrips, are even
in the present day plunged in obscurity, to half the people who read
for the sake of appearances the city news. This perplexity was
considerably greater in the golden days of Jemmy Taylor, and the
profits of stockbroking were monopolized by a choice and favoured
few. Taylor was one of the most successful, and is said to have
amassed a fortune of two hundred thousand pounds, by his money
speculations. But this vast sum was accumulated without enjoyment,
save the enjoyment derived from the gratification of his acquisitive
propensity. He lived in a house which few would condescend to
inhabit, and which the most impoverished would look upon with
disdain. The wind blew through innumerable crevices in the walls, and
whistled through broken panes; the rain spattered down from huge
apertures in the roof, and the very stairs creaked with their ancient
rottenness. His chamber was in all respects the chamber of a miser;
dreary, desolate, and chilly. His bed was a truss of straw, and a few
dirty rags served him for sheets; his food was of the most scanty and
penurious description, and his clothes would have disgraced the
indigent by their ragged filthiness; they were often the means of
enabling this thrifty being to add a penny to his store; for the
benevolent, thinking him destitute, frequently bestowed upon him some
trifle in charity. One day, some ladies near the Bank, supposing him
to be in great want, gave him sixpence, which he received with a low
bow, and immediately set off to purchase a twopenny steak, which, on
returning, he carried in his hand, to show them that he had not
misapplied their bounty.

     Jemmy Taylor enjoyed the friendship of several who were as
avaricious, and as parsimonious, as himself. The famous Daniel Dancer
was a great favourite, and was sometimes invited to partake of his
hospitality. On one occasion, two bankers' clerks calling upon
Taylor, found him busily engaged in boiling one solitary mutton chop
in a prodigious quantity of water, to make, what he termed, some
comfortable broth for himself and his old friend, Dancer, whom he
hourly expected. After some complimentary salutations, the clerks,
feeling disposed for fun, induced Jemmy to leave the room, to procure
them some refreshment, from a neighbouring tavern; and during his
absence they threw into his saucepan three halfpenny -candles, which
happened to be lying on the table. This was regarded, by the two old
misers, as a grateful and savoury acquisition, for they devoured the
broth with a relish, and lavishly praised its surpassing richness and
strength. The next day Taylor met the two clerks upon 'Change, and
accused them of stealing his candles. They declared their innocence,
assuring him that they merely committed them to the pot, at the
bottom of which, most probably, he would still find the wicks, if
they had not, in their hunger, devoured them!

     A short time after the American war, it is said, that the Earl
of Northumberland having occasion for seventy-four thousand pounds,
applied to a broker, who appointed a certain day for the transfer. At
the time and place for meeting, there was posted in waiting, old
jemmy Taylor, who, in appearance, resembled some itinerant vendor of
matches. Upon the Duke's arrival, the broker brought Jemmy forward to
his grace, who, not knowing him, thought he was a beggar, and was
about to bestow a trifle upon him, when he was informed that he was
"a warm man." His grace immediately shook hands with the dirty
usurer, and Jemmy accommodated him with seventy-four thousand pounds,
out of one stock, in the four per cents., and from whence, as it
appeared by the books, he could have sold out as much more, and yet
have had as much left as would have made him comfortable all the rest
of his days.

     In hoarding up his gold, and denying himself every comfort to do
so, Taylor did but follow the promptings of a passion, which, by
encouragement, had become inordinate; people with whom he was
acquainted, would sometimes endeavour to persuade him of the folly of
such penurious habits, and beg of him to indulge in a few of the
blessings of life. To all such appeals Taylor turned a deaf ear; and
he used to reply, that "if his successors had as much pleasure in
spending his property, as he had in. hoarding it up, they need not
complain of their hard lot in the world!"

     A curious anecdote is related of Taylor, in his last days, and
as he lay on the bed of sickness. He had little thought of religion,
during his career in life, but now, as death approached, he felt some
compunctions of conscience. He hoped, by sacrificing a small portion
of his ill-gotten store, to absolve his sins, and. to purchase some
reward hereafter. He sent for the parish officers, the parson, and
the curate, and, entreating their prayers, he paid them down twelve
hundred pounds; but it is said that he would not conclude his bequest
until they consented to return him a twelvemonths' interest, by way
of discount for prompt payment!

     His name, we believe, still adorns the donation board of Saint
Saviour's Church, in the Borough. He died in 1793, and the following
curious, but no very flattering Epitaph, was inserted by some wag, in
the evening papers of the time:—

HERE LIES JEMMY TAYLOR,
alias
GRIPUS, THE SOUTHWARK MISER,
Who lived and died single to save Expenses.
HIS MATCHLESS ŒCONOMY
Could only be compared to his singular Resolution in
SELF-DENIAL.
He was so disinterested in his Disposition, that he never
Preferred one Person to another, but cast an equal
Eye upon all his Acquaintance.
His mind was of such a peculiar Cast, that he could neither
Hear the Tale, nor behold the Face of the Wretched;
And to avoid mistaken Acts of Charity,
Never bestowed the smallest Mite upon the Poor, until
Death, that shakes the strongest Head, whispered,
"TAYLOR, give something to the CHURCH."
Envied by the Avaricious for his vast Wealth,
Detested by the malicious World for his severe Virtues,
And regretted by none of his
FRIENDS UPON THE 'CHANGE,
He gave up this Life, with Fears of a Better,
IN THE SEVENTIETH YEAR OF HIS EXISTENCE;
And has left his Relations perfectly resigned
To the Will of Heaven,
For having withdrawn, in good Time, the
Accumulator of their Fortunes.



CHAPTER VII: LIFE OF THOMAS GUY THE BOOKSELLER.

Life of Thomas Guy, an Illustration of Parsimony without Avarice—His
Speculations and Schemes—His Economy and his Liberality—Anecdote of
Guy and Hopkins the Miser—Matrimonial Engagements—Mutability of Love—
Death of Guy—His Munificence—Last Will and Testament—Conclusion, &c.

     As an illustration of extreme parsimony without avarice, we
present the reader with a brief sketch of the life and eccentric 
habits of Thomas Guy. This remarkable man, whose charity far exceeded
his habits of saving, was the son of a lighterman and coal-merchant
in Horsleydown, Southwark. [Note: See Highmore's Pietas Londinensis,
8vo. Lond. 1810, for some account of this singular character.] He was
born at the commencement of the civil war: of his education and early
life but little is known. In 1660 he was bound apprentice to John
Clarke, a bookseller, living in the porch of Mercer's Hall,
Cheapside. As soon as his term was expired, he commenced trading for
himself, with a capital of two hundred pounds; he carried on business
in a house situated between Cornhill and Lombard Street, and his
trade was principally in English Bibles. At that time Bibles were so 
badly and so carelessly printed in England, that almost every page
was disfigured by some typographical error. This induced Guy to enter
into a speculation to print them in Holland, and to import them into
England, by which scheme a more accurate edition could be sold at a
price considerably under that of the London Bibles. The University of
Oxford, having by charter certain privileges in the printing of
Bibles, interfered and prevented our enterprising bibliopole from
carrying out his design. He then, however, contracted with the
University for the privilege of printing them; and for many years he
was enabled to amass considerable sums of money by carrying on an
extensive trade in Bibles. This laid the foundation for his vast
fortune; for being a bachelor, and naturally of a very frugal and
saving disposition, his profits were allowed to accumulate. He was
most penurious in his domestic arrangements, and the complete suit of
his every day apparel would scarcely have fetched eighteen-pence from
the most enterprising Israelite. He usually dined upon his shop
counter with an old newspaper or dirty proof-sheet for a table cloth.
His meals were always of the most frugal nature, and he seldom
indulged in luxuries. His savings as a book-seller he speedily
augmented by purchasing seamen's tickets, during the continental wars
in Queen Anne's time, and by large but cautious speculations in South
Sea Stock.

     Most of our readers are probably familiar with the history of
that celebrated "bubble," and are aware how pernicious were its
effects at the time upon the operations of legitimate commerce: the
pursuit of trade was abandoned—property was sacrificed at a ruinous
loss, and visions of a golden future fevered the imaginations of the
most unpretending capitalists. Stock rose enormously; and every man
who possessed a portion regarded it as the germ of future affluence.
By and bye the bubble burst, and thousands were ruined in the
terrible crisis. Gay the poet held some of the stock, which the
advice of his more cautious friends could not induce him to part
with; he deemed it worth twenty thousand pounds, every penny of which
was lost. Some few, more careful than the rest, enriched themselves
by selling out when the delusion was in its zenith. Thomas Guy was
among this number. In the year 1720 he possessed stock to the amount
of forty-five thousand five hundred pounds. His suspicions were
excited as to its stability as an investment; and when it rose to
about three hundred pounds he began to sell out, and continued doing
so until it arose to six hundred, when he disposed of the whole of
his remaining property in the stock at that rate. It ultimately,
however, reached the almost fabulous price of one thousand and fifty
pounds per cent! From beginning to end Thomas Guy is said to have
made nearly five hundred thousand pounds by the great South Sea
bubble! During all this prosperity Guy observed the most rigid
parsimony; but he never allowed his love of saving to render him
forgetful of his duties as a Christian. Long before this vast
acquisition of wealth he paid for the building of the wards on the
north side of the outer court of Saint Thomas's Hospital, and for
many years he annually gave one hundred pounds towards the funds of
that institution. It is somewhat singular to find such munificence in
a person of such penurious habits; and the life of Thomas Guy is a
striking proof of the wide distinction we ought to draw between
parsimony and avarice: the one is not essentially a selfish or sordid
propensity, and its observance may sometimes have for its motive
noble ulterior object in view; whilst avarice is a passion purely
selfish, and can never sympathize with such virtues as charity or
benevolence. Not that we should deem it necessary to carry the
principle of saving to the extent which the following anecdote of Guy
displays. It is said that one evening he was sitting in his little
back parlour meditating over a handful of half lighted embers,
confined within the narrow precincts of a brick stove; a farthing
candle was on the table at his side, but it was not lit, and the fire
afforded no light to dissipate the gloom; he sat there all alone
planning some new speculation; congratulating himself on saving a
pennyworth of fuel, or else perchance thinking how else he could
bestow some thousand guineas in charity: his thoughts, whether on
subjects small or great, were interrupted by the announcement of a
visitor; he was a shabby, meagre, miserable looking old man; but
compliments were exchanged, and the guest was invited to take a seat;
Guy immediately lighted his farthing candle, and desired to know the
object of the gentleman's call: the visitor was no other than the
celebrated Hopkins, who on account of his avarice and rapacity had
obtained the name of Vulture Hopkins. "He lived," says Pope,
"worthless, but died worth three hundred thousand pounds, which he
would give to no person living, but left it so as not to be inherited
till after the second generation." His counsel represented to him how
many years it must be before this could take effect, and that his
money would only lie at interest all that time. He expressed great
joy thereat, and said they would then be as long in spending as he
had been in getting it. But the Chancery afterwards set aside the
will, and gave it to the heir at law. The reader will probably
remember the lines in Pope's Moral Essays—

"When Hopkins dies a thousand lights attend,
The wretch that living saved a candle's end."

     "I have been told," said Hopkins, as he entered the presence of
Thomas Guy, "that you are better versed in the prudent and necessary
art of saving, than any man now living, and I now wait upon you for a
lesson in frugality, an art in which I used to think I excelled, but
I am told by all who know you that you are greatly my superior." "If
that is all you are come about," said Guy, "why then we can talk the
matter over in the dark;" so saying, he with great deliberation put
the extinguisher on his newly lighted farthing candle. Struck with
this instance of economy, Hopkins acknowledged the superior abilities
of his host, and took his leave imbued with a profound respect for
such an adept in the art of saving.

     It is singular to observe what trifling events will sometimes
act as a pivot upon which the future events of a life will turn. It
is to one of these slight rufflings in the stream of life that the
public are indebted for the noble institution which still exists as a
monument of the munificent charity of the parsimonious Thomas Guy.
"He employed," says Highmore, a female servant whom he agreed to
marry. Some days previous to the intended ceremony he ordered the
pavement before his door to be mended up to a particular stone, which
he marked, and then left his house on business. The servant in his
absence looking at the workman, saw a broken stone beyond the mark
which they had not repaired, and on pointing to it with that design,
they acquainted her that Mr. Guy had not ordered them to go so far.
She however directed it to be done, adding, with the security of
feeling incidental to her expectation of soon becoming his wife,
"Tell him I bade you, and he will not be angry." But she soon learnt
how dangerous it is for any one in a dependent situation to exceed
the limits of their authority; for her master, on his return, was so
enraged at finding that they had exceeded his orders, and put him to
an additional expense, that he renounced his matrimonial engagement
with his servant, and devoted his ample fortune to public charity.

     When he had reached the age of seventy-six, and found himself
possessed of a fortune, which might justly be regarded as enormous
for the age, Guy commenced his munificent plans of charity. He took
of the Governors of St. Thomas's Hospital, a piece of ground opposite
to that building, on a lease of nine hundred and ninety-nine years,
at an annual rent of thirty pounds per annum. The spot was, at that
time, covered with small tenements, which in a few months he had
removed. Plans were drawn out—foundations dug with the utmost speed;
and he who had been so solicitous to save a farthing candle, had the
gratification to behold, before he died, a handsome hospital erected
with a portion of his parsimonious savings. Eighteen thousand seven
hundred and ninety-three pounds were expended in the erection of
Guy's Hospital; and its eccentric founder, who died in 1724, in his
eighty-first year, endowed it with two hundred and twenty thousand
pounds, the residue of his estate. Other acts of kindness and charity
adorn the memory of this singular but most benevolent man. He
bequeathed one thousand pounds for the discharging of four debtors
within the City of London, and in the counties of Middlesex and
Surrey; by this means, some seven or eight hundred were liberated
from prison. He bequeathed to Christ's Hospital a perpetual annuity
of four hundred pounds, for taking in four children yearly, on the
nomination of the Governors. In his life time he founded some
almshouses at Tamworth, which borough he represented in Parliament
during several sessions; these almshouses he further endowed by his
will with a perpetual annuity of one hundred and twenty-five pounds.
Nor did this worthy man forget his numerous relatives—many of them
were poor, and most of them were in indifferent circumstances—they
all, however, had to be grateful for the parsimony which Guy had
practised during his life. Not one of them was forgotten; to some he
left small annuities for life, and to others considerable sums of
money. To most of his sister's children and cousins, who were very
numerous, he left a thousand pounds apiece. Among his poor relatives,
in various sums, he left life annuities amounting to near nine
hundred pounds per annum; and among his younger relations and
executors, he distributed nearly seventy-six thousand pounds. It is
seldom that the hoardings of parsimony have been in their
distribution so guided by the dictates of benevolence. Guy did not,
like the miser, save for the senseless and selfish gratification of
an ignoble passion. He saved that he might bestow, and he consecrated
his profits in trade, and his accumulations by rigid self-denial to
the service of the poor, the unfortunate, and the sick—all honour,
and all praise, to the memory of the kind and noble-hearted
bookseller!



CHAPTER VIII. THE LIFE OF DANIEL DANCER.

His Birth and Estate—His garments and outward appearance—Miss Dancer
and her feminine graces—The Miser's Mansion—The finding of a
Treasure—The Story of the Mutton Pies—A Miser's idea of Death—Bob,
the Miser's cur—Griffiths and his Master—How to turn a penny—A
substitute for a Fire—The advantages of keeping a Snuff-box—The Miser
dies without a Shirt—The Treasures of a Dunghill, &c.

     THERE are few, who, by their habits of parsimony, have gained
such notoriety as Daniel Dancer; by nature he was a complete miser,
the passion of avarice in him, obscured during the whole of his life
every feeling of virtue, and every trace of natural affection.

     The life of Dancer is not without its moral; we behold the vice
of an inordinate acquisitiveness in its darkest hues, and we learn
how incompetent is wealth to bestow happiness without the presence of
virtue and benevolence to guide the mind in its distribution, and to
make its accumulation in the hands of one, a blessing to the hearts
of many.

     Daniel Dancer was born in the year 1716, he was the oldest of a
family of three boys, and one girl; his father lived on Harrow Weald
Common, on Harrow-on-the-Hill, where he possessed property, which
produced a comfortable income; we have no information relative to the
habits and character of the senior Dancer, and can-not say whether
the propensity to acquire was excited in the mind of the son, by the
example of the parent, nor have we any memorial of the infancy and
boyhood of this famous miser.

     Upon the death of his father, Daniel Dancer came into possession
of the paternal estate; the few hundreds which it annually produced
was, by the strictest parsimony, and the most rigid saving, so
increased as to produce, before he died, a revenue of three thousand
pounds per annum. The sister of this singular character was as
miserly as himself, and their habits and inclinations so harmonized,
that after the death of their parents they always lived together, and
strove during the whole of their lives to rival each other in their
mode of scraping up and saving money.

     The outward appearance of this amiable couple was such, that
none could pass them without remark; and most could observe from
their dress and manners indications of the presence of that sordid
passion to which they devoted their entire lives, and to which they
sacrificed every source of comfort and enjoyment. Daniel was his own
tailor, and if he was not particularly happy in the style and cut of
his garments, he at least displayed considerable ingenuity in the way
of patching, repairing, and contriving; Jacob might have been proud,
and Joseph vain of such a coat of many colours, as was the outer
garment of Daniel Dancer; it was made of pieces of every hue, and
fragments of every texture, collected from the streets, or raked out
from the dust heaps. His lower garments were of the most
unmentionable description, and would totally have disordered the
nerves of any Scotchman; they were kept together by a strong hay-band
girt round his waist, his stockings were so much darned, that it was
difficult to discover any traces of the original, and in cold or wet
weather, they were usually fortified and protected with ropes of
twisted hay; by this novel and ingenious contrivance, he was enabled
to save his boots; in fact, he was never known to spend a single
shilling in shoe leather; now and then he would in his rambles pick
up an odd shoe, which some poor cottager had thought too old for use;
these were regarded by Dancer as great treasures, and he often spent
his winter evenings in mending and patching them, for he was always
his own cobbler. Linen was a luxury, says his biographer, to which,
notwithstanding his avaricious disposition, he was not quite a
stranger; for, at an early period of his saving career, he used to
buy two shirts annually; but, for some years previous to his death,
he never allowed himself more than one, for which he would give at
some old clothes shop two shillings and sixpence, and was never once
known to go to so handsome a price as three shillings; after it had
got into his possession, it never underwent the necessary operation
of either washing or mending; upon his back it was doomed to
perpetual slavery, until it fell off in rags; hence, it will not be
doubted, nor will it surprise the reader to be told, that
notwithstanding Mr. Dancer's peculiarity of disposition induced him
to shun the world, he never was without a numerous retinue about him;
whose lively sport and attachment to his person, made his
acquaintance as well as his neighbours, extremely cautious of
approaching him.

     Nor was Miss Dancer more scrupulous in her attire: she had but
few feminine charms, and these few she made no attempts to adorn with
the fascination of dress. Her accoutrements were usually a mixture of
male with female paraphernalia, tied round with a ravelling of hemp;
for even in this part of her attire, she studied how to make one cord
last longer by untwisting it to make it go further; and thus
equipped, she would sally forth, armed with a broom-stick and pitch-
fork, to check the progress of such daring marauders as had the
audacity to intrude upon her brother's grounds—on which occasions,
her neighbours observed she had more the appearance of a walking
dunghill than of one of the fair sex.

     The miserable hovel in which this eccentric, but harmonious
pair, took up their abode, was perfectly in accordance with their
appearance: no one could have passed it without thinking of poverty
and squalidness: it was an eyesore to passers-by, and a bugbear to
the rising generation. The crazy window-sashes were paneless, and the
loss of glass had been supplied with pieces of board, with paper and
dirty rags. The tiles were loosened from the roof, and patches of
unknown substances proclaimed the parsimony and ingenuity of the
owner of the wretched habitation: the miser's house, in fact, was
like the miser's coat, so patched and so slovenly repaired, that
little of the original could be discovered; and its architecture
appeared of the most novel and inventive kind.

     Mr. Dancer's calculations for saving money were systematic and
regular: nothing escaped his attention which had relation to this
great object of his life—nothing ever too trivial for his care, and
nothing too mean for his attention. So rigid was his parsimony, that
he rarely washed his face and hands, because, as he said, soap was
expensive, towels would wear out in time, and cost money to cleanse
when dirty. It is said, however, that to avoid the inconvenience
arising from a too great accumulation of filth, he would, once or
twice a week, in the summer time, repair to a neighbouring pond, and
there wash himself with sand, and afterwards lie on the bank to dry
his skin by basking in the sunshine.

     Dancer undoubtedly possessed an inventive genius, and his
talents were great auxiliaries to his schemes of saving. If he felt
the want of any article, he always endeavoured to make some other
object answer the purpose, to obviate the necessity of expenditure.
One day, by some strange chance, a neighbour entered the hovel of the
miser: he found Mr. Dancer busily engaged pulling the nails out of
the side of his bellows; and upon asking him the reason for so doing,
he replied, that wanting some nails to fasten a piece of leather to a
hole, which time had effected in the boarding of the house, he
thought he could spare some out of that useful piece of household
furniture, and, by that means, save buying; observing, at the same
time, that undertakers, trunk-makers, and bellows-makers were the
most extravagant and wasteful rascals in the world in their profusion
of nails.

     Daniel Dancer and his sister seem to have lived for no other
purpose than to save money, nor to have had any other object than its
accumulation. They had no thoughts, nor principles, nor rules of
life, but such as were grounded upon the multiplication table. Every
action of their life was to acquire, and their every thought was
devoted to the study of the art of saving. They denied themselves any
regular repast, but strove to vie with each other in their endeavours
to lengthen the period between their meals. They never eat but when
hunger compelled, and they never, in satisfying their hunger,
indulged in the luxury of gratifying their appetite. Three pounds of
coarse beef, and fourteen hard dumplings, formed their weekly
provision for many years, without alteration or improvement. In hot
weather, the meat appealed unpleasantly to the sense of smell, and
advanced somewhat too far in the process of decomposition to have
pleased a delicate appetite; but, as old Daniel used to observe on
such occasions, that those who were devoted to saving, should feel
satisfaction at these circumstances; for, if it did not improve the
flavour of the meat, it rendered it more economical, because a less
quantity proved sufficient; and, as none could be wasted, it lasted
all the longer. Accident, or some unexpected fall of luck, would
occasionally relieve this everlasting routine of hard dumplings. An
uncommon instance (says his biographer) occurred one summer's
morning, which, for many weeks, saved him the trouble of inquiring
for fragments of meat at the butcher's stall, and which enabled him
to gratify his darling avarice and insatiable propensity to save
money. It happened one morning, as Mr. Dancer was taking his usual
walk upon the common, to pick up bones, sticks, or any bit of rag or
other matters that might go towards repairing his clothes or his
house; that he found a sheep that had apparently died from natural
disease, and most probably in a putrid state: this was a rare prize
for Mr. Dancer; and incredible as it may appear, he took it up, and
bore it home on his shoulders in triumph to his sister, who received
it as the immediate gift of heaven to bless their poor souls with a
change of food, and enable them to feast without expense, which was,
to the appetite of a miser, the most savoury sauce that could
accompany such a delicious morsel as carrion mutton. The sheep was
immediately skinned and cut up, the fat was carefully laid aside,
and, with the meat, Miss Dancer manufactured an immense number of
pies; on these pies they feasted for many weeks—never departing from
their accustomed frugality, and never indulging in any change of
diet, until the whole stock was consumed. When a miser finds a
treasure he is sure to lock it up; he is nervous whilst the eyes of
strangers are upon it, and he never thinks it safe unless bars or
bolts protect it. Dancer, therefore, soon locked up his pies in his
strong chest, much to the annoyance of his fair sister; for the
neighbours one morning observing that lady rather low spirited,
kindly inquired into the cause, when, after some hesitation, she
acknowledged that her brother Daniel had scolded her for feasting
upon the mutton pies with too voracious an appetite, and accused her
of extravagance, which she observed with tears, was an exceedingly
hard case, as she loved to save as well as himself; but what vexed
her more, he had locked them up in his strong trunk. It was seldom
that such precaution was necessary, for she appears to have been as
totally absorbed by the spirit of acquisitiveness as her brother;
they were children of the same parents, and never were two beings in
their devotion to mammon, and in their inordinate avarice, born with
such an exact resemblance. Their tastes and their disposition, their
opinions and principles were in perfect harmony. The miser is ever a
stranger to piety, and religion is at variance with the professed
object of his life. Whenever Mr. Dancer happened to stray into a
church, it was only to obtain a little rest, and he was sure to
depart before any collection was made; as he thought the gift of a
penny was like parting with the seed of a guinea. He might, indeed,
be deemed a predestinarian from the following circumstance. But as
Mr. Locke observes, "Let ever so much probability hang on one side, a
covetous man's reasoning, and money on the other, it is easy to
foresee which will outweigh." It was during the last illness which
terminated his sister's life, that he was importuned to afford her
some medical advice and assistance; to which he shrewdly replied, "It
would cost him money, and besides," continued he, "why should I waste
my money in wickedly and wantonly trying to oppose the will of God!
If the girl has come to her latter end, nothing can save her, and all
I may do will only tend to make me lose my money; and she may as well
die now as at any other time. If I thought bleeding would recover
her, I would open a vein myself; but I cannot think of paying for
physic for dying people." The dread of incurring expense, and parting
with his darling coin, was insurmountable. Mr. Dancer's reasoning on
the conduct of Providence, ever tended towards his favourite
penchant—" Save money."

     Perhaps never having felt the inconvenience of ill health, or,
from that callosity of heart ever attendant upon an avaricious mind;
he at this period allowed his sister, in her last exigency, but the
usual portion of coarse beef, with the cold hard dumpling, to which
he added the miser's humanity—"If you don't like it, why go without."
But Mr. Dancer's deficiency of care was very amply supplied by the
generous Lady Tempest, who afforded every attention and kindness
necessary to the ease of Miss Dancer. The latter was possessed of
more than two thousand pounds, which she intended to leave Lady
Tempest, for her extraordinary care in her last illness; but she,
unfortunately for Lady Tempest, expired before she could sign a will
in her favour; and her property being thus left intestate, and at the
dis, position of the law, her two other brothers wished equally to
divide it with Mr. Dancer; but to this proposal he would not agree,
and obstinately refused to comply with any amicable arrangement;
insomuch that, after a long while persevering, and obstinately
refusing to come to any agreement of participation, a law suit
followed, and Mr. Dancer recovered ten hundred and forty pounds of
his sister's fortune, as the regular price of her board and lodging
for thirty years, at thirty pounds per annum, and one hundred pounds
for the last two years; for this charge he declared to be very
reasonable, as during that time she had done nothing but eat and lie
in bed. The remainder of her estate, after these extraordinary
deductions, was equally divided between the two brothers and Mr.
Dancer.

     After his sister's death, a pair of sheets, as black as soot
bags, were discovered upon the bed; but these he would never suffer
to be removed; and when they were worn out, they were never replaced;
so that, after that time, he entirely relinquished the luxury of
using linen to sleep in. He would not allow anyone to make his bed,
although Lady Tempest often solicited him to permit it; and for many
years his room was never swept. Towards the time of his death, it was
observed to be filled with sticks, which he had stolen out of the
different hedges. A considerable quantity of odd-shapen gravel stones
were also found in a bag; but for what use these were intended is
unknown. The report of his riches, and the idea of its concealment
about the house, once brought a troop of housebreakers, who very
easily entered, and without any search warrant rummaged every corner
of the place; but although this domiciliary visit cost some of them
their lives, they took away but little property. Old Dancer had been
long on his guard, and his mode of hiding was so peculiar to himself,
that the grand object of the thieves was never discoverable by them.
Mr. Dancer concealed his treasure where no one would have ever
thought of seeking for it. Bank notes were usually deposited with the
spiders, and hid amongst the cobwebs in the cowhouse; and guineas in
holes in the chimney, and about the fireplace, covered with soot and
ashes. Soon after the robbery, when the thieves were apprehended, and
to be tried, it being very necessary that Mr. Dancer should attend
the trial, Lady Tempest requested that, in order to appear a little
decent, he would change his shirt, and she would lend him a clean
one. "No, no," he replied, "it is not necessary; the shirt I have on
is quite new, I bought it only three weeks ago, and then it was
clean."

     This extreme love of money overcame every other consideration;
and to his attachment to gain may be ac-counted his strange behaviour
as before related, to his sister at her latter end. But in one
singular instance he seemed in some measure to forego his favourite
idea of saving. He had a dog, of which he was extremely fond, and
which he called by the familiar appellation of "Bob." His treatment
of this animal offers an instance of that inconsistency in human
actions, which philosophy seeks in vain to account for. "While his
parsimony was so severe, that he denied himself a penny loaf a day,
and existed entirely upon Lady Tempest's pot liquor, and the scraps
from her kitchen; he allowed his dog a pint of milk daily, with other
dainties, which he would have thought a sinful waste to have procured
for himself. Upon a complaint being made to him that his favourite
Bob had worried some of his neighbour's sheep, he took the dog to a 
farrier's shop, and had all his teeth filed down. For this barbarous
action he never assigned any reason; possibly it might be to prevent
the like again, as he might shrewdly guess that any further damage
from his dog's mischievous manner, might bring expenses upon him. His
sister being dead and finding himself lonesome, he hired a man for
his companion, and in his choice he showed much discernment; for his
man Griffiths was a proper counterpart of himself. When they went
out, they took different roads, though both followed the same
occupation; only that the servant indulged more taste for strong
beer; a liquor which Mr. Dancer carefully avoided, as costing money;
but Griffiths would tipple a little, which was the cause of much
altercation, when these saving souls met, after their day's labour.
However, Griffiths generally came loaded with bones, some of which
having upon them still some fragments of flesh, served to heighten
their repast, and to quiet his master's anger. This fellow had, by as
severe a parsimony as that exercised by Mr. Dancer, contrived to
accumulate five hundred pounds out of wages, which had never exceeded
ten pounds per annum. At the time he lived with Mr. Dancer, he was
upwards of sixty, and hired himself to him for eighteen pence a
week."

     Lady Tempest was the only person who had any influence on this
unfortunate miser. She employed every contrivance to make him partake
of those conveniences and indulgences, which his fortune could
supply, and his advanced years required; but all her entreaties were
without effect, and were only answered with such interrogatories as,
"Where was he to get the money?"—"How could he afford it? If it was
not for some charitable assistance, how could he live?" One day
however, this lady, after a great deal of persuasion, prevailed upon
Dancer to purchase a hat, which he did of a Jew, for a shilling,
having worn the one he then possessed upwards of fourteen years, but
he still considered it too good to throw away. When Lady Tempest
visited him the next time, she, to her great astonishment, perceived
him still with his old hat on. On importuning him for the reason, he
at last told her, that after much solicitation, he had prevailed on
his old man Griffiths, to give him sixpence profit upon the hat he
had purchased by her desire a few days before.

     Mr. Dancer had arrived at his seventy-eighth year, before he
felt any serious cause of complaint, to call in a doctor; his
antipathy to the medical tribe has been already mentioned; therefore
it was in vain to advise him to take any medicine, even when there
was a necessity for it.

     In 1794, during the illness which terminated the life of this
miserable object of avarice, Lady Tempest accidentally called upon
him, and found him lying in an old sack, which came up to his chin,
and his head wrapped up in pieces of the same materials, as big as a
bee hive. On her remonstrating against the impropriety of such a
situation, he observed, that being a very poor man he could not
afford better; and, having come into the world without a shirt, he
was determined to go out in the same manner. As he brought nothing
with him, he did not think he had any right to carry anything away;
and the less he made use of he thought was the more acceptable to
God; so that, in his last moments, he made his saving notions square
with his most serious thoughts. Lady Tempest then requested him to
have a pillow to raise his head, which he refused, but ordered his
old servant Griffiths to bring him some litter out of the stable to
raise his head, as the lady thought he would lie easier.

     Though Mr. Dancer never indulged himself in the extravagant
luxury of snuff-taking, yet he was careful always to solicit a pinch
or two from those who did; but it was not to gratify his own nose,
but rather to gratify, in a minor point of view, his love of
hoarding; all that he collected by these friendly offerings, he
carefully saved up and put into a box, which he carried about him for
that purpose; and when full he would barter its contents at a
neighbouring chandler's shop for a farthing candle, which he made
last until he had replenished his box again.

     His opinion of professors of physic was rather singular, and
seemed to border upon predestination. To use his own language, the
medical tinkers were all a set of rogues; that while they patched up
one hole, always contrived to make two, for a better job; but he
allowed that there was some utility in the art of surgery, in
repairing accidental fractures; but he always qualified the admission
with the reflection that its practitioners were a set of
extortioners.

     His prejudice against the whole tribe of lawyers was determined
in the extreme, and his aversion to this class of men was so great,
that he would even forego his own interest, to gratify his
resentment; as the following anecdote will prove.

     "Having, as was usually his half yearly custom, agreed with an
old clothes woman for a shirt for half a crown, as he thought, the
dealer called at his house, and left him one worth three shillings;
but for which he refused to pay any more than his original agreement
of two shillings and sixpence. Notwithstanding the party urged the
goodness and the fineness of the article Mr. Dancer was impenetrable,
and no more than the half-crown would he pay; which the woman as
peremptorily refusing, at last applied to the Court of Requests of
the district, to which he was obliged to repair, although it cost him
fivepence on the journey for bread and cheese, and the cost of
hearing, &c.; in all upwards of four and sixpence." This had such an
effect on Mr. Dancer's mind, that he ever afterwards held the lawyers
in abhorrence; for to give or to pay, were not to be found in his
vocabulary. Addition and multiplication were his favourite rules, and
usury was the foundation of his geod deeds.

     "The most delightful task of Mr. Dancer's life was to count his
gold, and to visit the holes where it lay depo-sited, and to see that
all was safe. Upon one of these nocturnal visits he was net a little
frightened: while counting the contents of one of his rich pots in
the cow-house; a large tom cat, terrified at his untimely appearance
in that place of concealment, and rushing through a hole in the
boarding, left Mr. Dancer in such panic, that he thought Old Nick
himself was watching his motions. To add to his terror, in returning
back to the home he fell over something soft, which proved at last to
be a poor jackass lying upon the ground, that had strayed in through
one of the many apertures time had made in the enclosure of the
estate."

     Though Mr. Dancer, by his spirit of covetousness, de-based
himself in this sordid manner, yet he kept a horse, for which he
showed a great partiality; but he never allowed it more than two
shoes at a time, deeming it all unnecessary expense to shoe the hind
feet of the animal; and he used to say it was more pleasant for a
horse to feel the naked grass than to be confined in unnatural shoes.

     Mr. Dancer was, perhaps, the most perfect picture of human
penury that ever existed, and the most singular character that ever
lived; his habits were those of an hermit, and his extreme avarice
rendered him as abstemious as any ascetic of the desert In this state
lived, and in this situation died, Daniel Dancer Esq., a memorable
proof to the world, that the advantages of fortune, unless properly
directed, will not make their possessor happy. Lady Tempest, who came
into possession of a great portion of the miser's property, enjoyed
it but for a short time; for whilst attending to the comforts of
Dancer during his last illness she caught a cold which terminated
fatally, a few months after her accession to the immense fortune left
by the old miser.

     The house, or rather the heap of ruins, in which Mr. Dancer
lived, and which at his death devolved to the right of Captain
Holmes, was a most miserable decayed building, for it had not been
repaired for more than half a century. But though poor in external
structure, the ruinous fabric was very rich in the interior. It took
many weeks to explore its whole contents; and Captain Holmes found it
a very agreeable task to dive into the miser's secret hoards. One of
Mr. Dancer's richest escritoires was found to be a dung heap in the
cowhouse; a sum but little short of two thousand five hundred pounds
was contained in this rich piece of manure; and in an old jacket
carefully tied, and strongly nailed down to the manger, in bank notes
and gold, were found five hundred pounds more. Several bowls were
discovered filled with guineas and half-guineas; and at different
times, on searching the corners of the house, they found various
parcels of bank notes. Some were crammed into the crevices in the
wall; bundles were hid under the cushions and covers of the chairs;
some were reposing snugly at the back of the drawers; and notes
amounting to six hundred pounds were found neatly doubled up, in the
inside of an old tea-pot, over which the miser had placed a bit of
paper, whimsically inscribed, "not to be too hastily looked over." In
the stable the Captain found jugs full of old dollars and shillings
It was observable that Mr. Dancer used to visit this place in the
dead of the night; but for what purpose even old Griffiths himself
could not guess; but it is supposed it was to rob one jug, to add to
a bowl he had buried, and which was nearly full when taken up from
under one of the hearth tiles.

     The chimney was not left unsearched, and paid very well for the
trouble; for in nineteen different holes, all filled with soot, were
found various sums of money, amounting together to more than two
hundred pounds.



CHAPTER IX: LIFE OF JOHN ELWES.

The character of John Elwes—Sir Harvey Elwes—His singular habits—His
dress—Three Knights quarrel about a farthing—Mrs. Meggot, the mother
of John Elwes, starves herself to death, although possessed of a
fortune of One Hundred Thou-Ban d Pounds—The love of Play in John
Elwes—His inconsistency of character—Generosity in a Miser—How to
save a toll—His conscientious disposition—The passion of avarice— His
old age—The Miser rescued when at the point of death—His last days—
His death, &c.

     THE life of John Elwes has been so minutely recorded in an
amusing narrative, by Captain Topham, and extracts from that work
have been so frequently reprinted, that we were prone to exclude his
name from our Lives and Anecdotes of Misers. It was some years ago
that we read the book, and we found on glancing over it again the
other day, that there were many anecdotes in his Memoirs, which so
illustrate the passion of avarice, as to render the life of John
Elwes especially deserving a notice from our hands. Mr. Elwes was a
miser in the fullest acceptation of the term, and to obtain gold
there was no sacrifice that he thought too great; yet he possessed
qualities and traits of amiability, that won for him, in spite of his
ruling vice, the respect and friendship of many worthy men.

     Before we relate some singular anecdotes of this miser for the
amusement of our readers, it will be as well to notice the memorable
eccentricities of his uncle, Sir Harvey Elwes. On succeeding to the
family estate, the knight became nominally possessed of some
thousands a year, but really only of an income of one hundred pounds
per annum. He said on his arrival at Stoke in Suffolk, the family
seat, that never would he leave it until he had entirely cleared the
paternal estate. For more than sixty years he lived there, almost
alone; grasping, screwing, and scraping, to accumulate wealth. He
received no visitors; he enjoyed no luxuries; and worst of all
deprivations, he read no books! He was never seen with a volume in
his hand; his scholarship was wholly devoted to the decyphering of
old deeds, and in composing usurious bonds. In his housekeeping, like
all misers, he was wretchedly penurious, and in his dress he would
have suited admirably for one of Garrick's most ludicrous characters.
He wore a black velvet cap, which being vastly too large, constantly
fell over his eyes; an old time-worn suit of dress clothes, with
worsted stockings drawn over the knees; these garments cost him
nothing, for he took them from an old chest, where they had lain ever
since the gay days of his father, Sir Jarvas Elwes. When the weather
was cold, Sir Harvey would walk briskly, backwards and forwards in
his old hall, to save the expense of firing; and if a farmer came on
business, he would strike a light in a tinder-box, which he always
kept by him, and putting one solitary stick in the huge old-fashioned
grate, would not add another till the first had been nearly consumed.

     Notwithstanding his dislike to society, Sir Harvey would
occasionally venture a portion of his wealth at the gaming table; in
fact, with the most miserly parsimony, the knight combined the
restless disposition of the gambler. Sir Cordwell Firebras, and Sir
John Barnardiston, were neighbours of Sir Harvey's, and from a
similarity of tastes they became close companions; they used to meet
at the little village of Stoke, and play a few rubbers of whist. When
they parted, the reckoning was always divided between them with the
most scrupulous exactitude, and the fractions of a penny were objects
of serious consideration. One day, when they were engaged in settling
some such difficult point, a wag called out to a friend that was
passing, "Step up stairs, and assist the poor! Here are three
baronets, each worth a million of money, quarrelling about a
farthing."

     Sir Harvey usually had large sums of money in the house,
amounting to three or four thousand pounds at a time. A set of
desperate burglars, dreaded and known throughout the country as the
Thackstead gang, hearing of this circumstance, formed a plan to rob
him. The old house was easily invaded, and the two servants were
gagged and threatened if they attempted resistance. They presented
their pistols to Sir Harvey, and demanded his money; he gave them the
key of a drawer, in which they found fifty guineas. They were
dissatisfied, and threatened instantly to take his life if he did not
deliver up his hoards. After many protestations of poverty, he at
last submitted to the urgent necessity of the case, and pointed out
the hiding-place of his treasure, in which were found twenty-seven
hundred guineas. On quitting, they told him that they should leave a
man behind, who would murder him if he called for assistance. Sir
Harvey, with admirable simplicity quietly took out his watch and
said, "Gentlemen, I do not want to take any of you, therefore I will
give you twenty minutes to escape."

     When this gang of thieves some years afterwards were captured,
Sir Harvey refused to appear against them; and when urged to go to
Chelmsford to identify them, he would reply, "No, no! I have lost my
money, and now you want me to lose my time also."

     Many are the anecdotes preserved of this singular man, but we
are compelled to leave them, to record those related of his nephew
and successor.

     The sister of Sir Harvey Elwes married a Mr. Meggot, a wealthy
brewer of Southwark, who died a few years after his marriage, leaving
a son, and one hundred thousand pounds to his widow. Mrs. Meggot,
like her brother, was of a most miserly disposition; and although
possessed of so ample a fortune, is said to have actually starved
herself to death! Sir Harvey left to her son, John Meggot, the whole
of his vast possessions, which were then estimated at two hundred and
fifty thousand pounds; and he directed that his nephew was thereupon
to assume the name and arms of the Elwes'. Mr. Elwes was about forty
years of age at his uncle's death; and previous to this period he had
entered into many of the gaieties of life, and became known to the
fashionable and sporting circles in London. He had always, however,
paid great deference to his uncle's foibles, and was always anxious
to ingratiate himself in his favour, by assuming an aspect of the
most rigid parsimony. On paying Sir Harvey a visit, he used to dress
as a perfect miser; a tattered waistcoat, a worn-out coat, stockings
darned with the most persevering industry, fastened with a pair of
small iron buckles; when thus arrayed, the uncle used to contemplate
his future heir with unfeigned delight, and was enraptured to find in
him so striking a resemblance of himself.

     Mr. Elwes had always a turn for play; in his time the gaming-
table was a fashionable resort, and he was one of the most celebrated
players of his day; few men had played deeper than himself. He once
played two days and two nights without intermission; the room being a
small one, and of course, never using the same pack a second time,
they were nearly up to their knees in cards. He lost many thousands
at that sitting; the Duke of Northumberland was of the party, who was
never known to quit a table while there was any hopes of winning. We
thus observe in the life of John Elwes, a remarkable instance of the
analogy which appears to exist between the gambler and the miser. The
love of play and the love of saving are both the promptings of
avarice, and are both indications of an undue excitement of the
acquisitive propensity.

"The ruling passion, be it what it will,
The ruling passion conquers Reason still."

     "It is curious," says Captain Topham, "to remark, how he
contrived to mingle small attempts at saving, with objects of the
most unbounded dissipation. After sitting up whole nights, staking
thousands with the most fashionable and profligate men of his day,
amid splendid rooms, gilt sofas, wax lights, and waiters, he would
walk out about four in the morning, not towards home, but into
Smithfield, to meet his own cattle, which were coming to market from
Thaydon Hall, a farm of his in Essex. There would the man, forgetful
of the scenes he had just left, stand in the cold or rain, haggling
with a carcase butcher for a shilling. Sometimes when the cattle did
not arrive at the hour appointed he would walk on to meet them; and
has more than once gone on foot the whole way to his farm, which was
seventeen miles from London, after sitting up the whole of the night.
Yet this remarkable man, who

In the way of a bargain.
He'd cavil on the ninth part of a hair.
SHAKESPEARE.

could be generous at times; several instances of his liberality are
recorded, which are curious to observe in one so habitually
parsimonious. On one of his excursions to Newmarket, he found that
Lord Abingdon had made a match for seven thousand pounds, which, it
was supposed he would be obliged to forfeit, from inability to
produce the sum, though the odds were greatly in his favour.
Unsolicited, Mr. Elwes offered him the money, which was accepted, and
his lordship won the engagement. On another occasion he advanced a
large sum of money to a gentleman of the name of Tempest, to purchase
a commission in the guards; he lent the money without security and
never asked him for its repayment, yet he had only seen him once or
twice."

     John Elwes was a singular illustration of the inconsistency of
the human mind. "One day a Mr. Spurling accompanied him to Newmarket,
to be present at the spring races. They were out from six in the
morning, and it was eight o'clock in the evening before they set out 
on their way home. Elwes, as usual, during the day eat nothing. When
they began their journey home the evening was dark and very cold, and
Mr. Spurling rode on somewhat quicker; and on going through the turn-
pike, by the "devil's ditch," he heard Mr. Elwes calling to him with
great eagerness. On returning before he had paid the toll, Mr. Elwes
said—"Here! here! follow me; this is the best road!" In an instant he
saw Mr. Elwes, as well as the night would permit, climbing his horse
up the precipice of the ditch. "Sir," said Mr. Spurling, "I can never
get up there." "No danger at all!" replied old Elwes, "but if your
horse be not safe, lead him!" At length, with great difficulty, they
mounted the ditch, and then, with not less toil, got down on the
other side. When they were safely landed on the plain, Mr. Spurling
thanked Heaven for their escape. "Aye," said the miser, "you mean
from the turnpike. Very right; never pay a toll if you can avoid it."
It is a curious fact, that at the very time when he thus ventured his
life to save a paltry toll, he was actually engaged in a speculation
connected with some American iron works, risking the enormous sum of
twenty-five thousand pounds; and upon which he had entered without
apparently much consideration, for he knew nothing as to the produce,
prospects, or situation of these mines, but what he had gleaned from
hearsay. With all his vices John Elwes, it must be owned, was
remarkably conscientious; if by any chance he became indebted, he was
never easy till he had paid; and he was never known if he promised
payment, to fail in fulfilling his engagement.

     Mr. Elwes had resided thirteen years in Suffolk, when he was
proposed as a representative in Parliament. He used to boast that all
the expense incurred in his election was eighteen-pence, which he
paid for dining at an ordinary at Reading. Mr. Elwes was about sixty
when he thus entered into public life; e sat in Parliament as the
member for Berkshire, for more than twelve years, but during the
whole of that time he never delivered a speech. Although remarkably
attentive to his parliamentary duties, he was never known to indulge,
even when the weather was the most uncomfortable, in the luxury of a
cab; and after staying out the debate, he would walk home, through
cold and wet, to save coach hire. Some of the members who happened to
be going the same way, would propose a coach between them, but Elwes
always replied that he liked nothing so much as walking. At length he
retired to his seat at Stoke; and on arriving there he remarked,
"That he had lost a great deal of money very foolishly, but that a
man grew wiser in time."

     And now in his declining years he became totally involved by his
mammon worship. His appetite for other pleasures had diminished. The
gaming-table had failed to excite his cupidity; the race course had
lost its attractions, and society no longer possessed a charm; but
whilst these sources of former joy were no longer sought; whilst
these desires had become extinguished by years, or chilled as the
winter of life approached, his lust and insatiable avarice for gold
remained vigorous in his old age, and green and flourishing amidst
the wintry barrenness which had overtaken the other vices and
passions of his mind. No ray of his better nature appeared—the
energies and thoughts of his old age were devoted to the acquisition
of wealth; and Mr. Ewes, now worth nearly a million of money, became
the saver of pence. He used to wander about the fields and roads to
pick up sticks, 'bones or pieces of rag; during the harvest month he
would condescend to mingle with the village gleaners, and carry home
the result of his labours .to store away for the use of his own
household. He would breakfast on a piece of stale pancake, or crust
of dry bread; and on more than one occasion almost starved himself by
his own extreme habits of penury.

     Mr. Elwes, when in London, usually occupied any one of his own
houses that happened to be unlet. Knowing that Elwes was in town, a
Colonel Tims was very anxious to see him, but could not obtain his
address; at last he accidentally heard that he was seen go into an
uninhabited house in Great Marlborough Street, and he ascertained
from a pot-boy that an old woman generally opened the stable-door to
admit Mr. Elwes. He repaired thither, and knocked loudly at the door,
but could gain no admittance; he determined to have the stable-door
opened; a blacksmith was sent for, and they entered the house
together; ascending the stairs, they heard the moans of some one
seemingly indisposed, and went into the chamber, and there, upon a
squalid mattress lay the apparently lifeless body of old Elwes. There
was nothing near him but a part of a stale roll and a jug of cold
water. An apothecary was called in, and after a time the miser
recovered enough to say, that he believed he had been ill for two or
three days, and that there was an old woman in the house, but for
some reason or other she had not been near him; that she had been ill
herself, but had got well, and he supposed she had gone away. On
entering the garret the old woman was found lifeless on. a mat upon
the floor, and to all appearances had been dead about two days: yet
at the time of this occurrence Mr. Elwes was one of the richest men
of his day, and possessed so many houses in London, that he became
from calculation his own insurer.

     As his end approached he had many warnings of coming
dissolution; his nights were broken and restless, and he frequently
arose to satisfy himself that his money was safe, and he was
sometimes heard as if struggling with someone in his chamber, and
crying out, "I will keep my money; no one shall rob me of my
property." On any one going into his room he started alarmed, and as
if waking from a troubled dream, would appear surprised, and quietly
retire again to his bed seeming totally unconscious of what had
happened. In the autumn of 1789 his mind began to waver; his memory
became impaired, and his reason rapidly declined. A propensity which
had long been overactive and diseased, now became fearfully violent
by the excitement of insanity. For many weeks before his death he
used to go to bed in his clothes as perfectly dressed as in the day-
time. One morning he was found in his bed fast asleep with his shoes
on, a stick in his hand, and an old hat on his head. The anxieties
and feverish excitement which his passion for gold produced, tended
to shorten his life. When Dr. Wells, his last physician, was called
in, and found him extended on his miserable pallet, denying himself
every comfort, and with his mind totally absorbed with his gold, he
turned to one of the sons of Mr. Elwes, and said, "Sir, your father
might have lived these twenty years, but his temper has made it
impossible to hope for anything; the body is yet strong, but the mind
is gone entirely." He died quietly on the 18th of November, 1789, but
without any indication of repentance, without any signs of a
diminution of his avarice, or without any thoughts of the future. In
his last words addressed to his son he expressed a hope "that he had
left him what he wished." He bequeathed the whole of his vast
fortune, amounting in addition to his estate, to the sum of five
hundred thousand pounds, to his two natural sons, George and John
Elwes.

     Thus died John Elwes, the representative of a family of misers.
He began, as we have seen, his career as a gambler, in which he
displayed his innate avarice, modified by his contact with the vices
of fashionable life; for amidst the most boundless profligacy at the
gaming-table, we have seen that acquisitiveness was ever active, and
his mind was always on the watch to save.

Search the Ruling Passion. There alone,
The wild are constant, and the cunning known;
The fool consistent and the false sincere;
Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.
POPE.



CHAPTER X: NOTICES OF FEMALE MISERS.

Mary Luhorne, the Female Miser of Deptford; her Miserable Habits of
Penury; her Love of Hoarding; her enormous Wealth—Elizabeth Wilcocks
and her secret Hoards—The Misses Vooght, Three Female Misers of
Amsterdam; a singular instance of Avarice as a Family failing—Joanna
Horrel the Applewoman of Exeter; her sumptuous fortune, etc.

     IT has been remarked, that when women become vicious they know
no medium; they are good or they are very bad; and when once
fascinated with vice, they are more difficult to reclaim than men.
Certainly, in the cases which we subjoin of female misers, the
passion of avarice appears in fearful strength, rendering the heart
of its votaries callous to the call of duty, and insensible to the
dictates of conscience.

     In the month of August of the year 1766 there died at Deptford a
wretched old woman, in her ninety-sixth year; she was the widow of
Captain Luhorne, of the East India service. She survived her husband
forty years, and during the whole of that period she lived in a most
miserly and penurious manner. She not only denied herself the
comforts, but even the most common necessaries and decencies of life.
Her clothes were so tattered that she was almost in a state of
nudity, and the rags which she hung upon her shoulders were so
filthy, and so animated with vermin, that passengers took the
precaution to keep at a distance from her in the streets. She was
never known to have lit a fire in her room, and never indulged in the
luxury of a candle; she wore no under-garments, and had no sheet to
cover her at night; she eschewed all rules of cleanliness, and
appeared never so happy as when surrounded with filth and
loathsomeness. She would frequently wander along the roads to beg of
passers-by, and always professed the utmost poverty. The demon of
avarice was so strong within this covetous soul, that she was more
than once detected in pilfering some trifling articles from her
neighbours. One Tuesday the old woman was missed; she had not been
observed to leave her room, and she had not been seen in her
accustomed walks: Wednesday passed, and the neighbours began to
suspect that the old miser must be ill; they knocked at her door, but
no voice replied; they waited for the morrow; and when the day had
far advanced, and she did not appear, they got in at the window. They
found her in bed alive, but speechless: with attention she revived a
little, but on Saturday the old woman died. Her relatives were sent
for, who on opening her drawers and chests found securities and gold
to the amount of forty thousand pounds, besides clothes of the most
sumptuous make and texture, plate, china, jewels and linen. For years
had she been surrounded with this wealth and possessed these
luxuries, which if rightly used would have served to comfort her old
age, and have been the means of relieving the miseries and wants of
others; the remembrance would in return have proved a great solace to
the bed of sickness and death. Yet although her drawers were thus
crammed with costly apparel, which was slowly mouldering and rotting
before the effects of time; that wretched object of penury chose
rather to wear rags so filthy that it became the imperative duty of
her relatives to burn them immediately after her death.

     In a life so wretched—so devoid of purpose, so laborious,
without an object, so self-denying and so debased—we have a striking
example of the littleness of human wishes, and the ignobility of the 
human mind, when unguided by reason, and when swayed by the despotism
of the passions. Her life is, indeed, a problem the philosopher will
find some difficulty to solve. With forty thousand pounds, no
fraction of which she would venture to enjoy—with none for whom
affection would prompt her to save—here was a wretched being whose
lust for gold, and whose propensity to hoard, was so overwhelming,
that she would beg of strangers in the streets—pilfer whatever she
could lay her hands upon; and although surrounded with an abundance,
deprived herself of every enjoyment—of every hope and consolation—
that she might gratify this most senseless propensity of her nature.
When we think of the worthlessness of her life—of her avarice, as
manifested in all its strength at the age of ninety-five, and of her
lonely and comfortless death-bed—we are prompted to exclaim, with the
psalmist, Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas! ("Vanity of vanities, all
is vanity"–Ecclesiastes. 1.2)

     In the year 1768, there died at Nether-Shuckburgh, in
Warwickshire, an old maid, named Elizabeth Wilcocks, whose life
presents a similar illustration of that love of hoarding, and that
passion to acquire, which we have seen exemplified so fearfully in
the case of Mary Luhorne. For many years before her death, she ate
nothing but horse-beans or a few curlings: she had hardly any
clothes, and had nothing but a bundle of straw and an old blanket to
lie upon; yet, at her death, twelve pairs of sheets, and a large
quantity of other linen, was found in her drawers. She hid her wealth
in the most unaccountable places. In a pickle-pot, stowed away in the
clock-case, was discovered eighty pounds in gold and five pounds in
silver. In a hole under the stairs a canister full of gold: in an old
rat-trap a large quantity of gold and silver, and in several other
places similar hoards were discovered by her executors. In addition
to all this wealth, this miserable old miser was possessed of an
estate in houses and land producing a handsome revenue. She left the
whole of her property to a very distant relative.

     In an old newspaper, called the "General Evening Post," of the
date December 21, 1779, there is an announcement of the death of Miss
Maria Vooght, the female miser, of Amsterdam. She was the last of
three singular and parsimonious sisters. Lest they should not be
enabled to gratify their propensity to accumulate and save, they
resolutely declined all offers of matrimony. They lived huddled
together in one room—gloried, like true misers, in filth, and lumber,
and vermin. They ate the coarsest food, and of that but sparingly,
and they were never known to have bestowed a fraction in charity.
There never, perhaps, were seen such miserable, dirty, and untidy old
maids. In all three, the passion of avarice was equally strong: it
appeared in them a family vice: they were not induced to become so
parsimonious from the fear of any future want, for they had each a
fortune which would have secured all those comforts and enjoyments it
is in the power of gold to provide. Maria Vooght, the last of these
eccentric characters, left at her death, a fortune of five millions
of guilders, equal to five hundred thousand pounds. She died in-
testate, and the money went to strangers.

     About forty years ago, the overseers of Horncastle summoned a
poor man, named Daniel Collwood, for refusing to support his wife. He
was asked why he had not done so, and he stated, in reply, that his 
wife took all the money she could obtain from him; but instead of
applying it to domestic purposes, hoarded it away, but in what place
he was unable to discover. The overseers ordered a search to be made.
On entering the house, the woman, as usual, pleaded the utmost
poverty, affirming that she was almost starving with hunger, and that
she had not a single farthing in the house. They, much to her
consternation, commenced a search, and soon found hid in various
parts about one hundred and thirty-four pounds in specie, carefully
wrapped up in small bits of paper and folded round with old rags!
Yet, whilst this miserable being had been accumulating this sum, she
had destroyed the domestic peace of her husband by spreading about a
report that he refused to allow her the necessary means of
subsistence.

     Many years ago, there used to sit in the streets of Exeter an
old woman selling lemons and apples. In the very hottest day she did
not flinch before the sun; and in the very bitterest of December
nights she was sure to be found at her accustomed place. Now and then
she did business in her little way, and took a few coppers from the
urchins in the streets. Her appearance bespoke the utmost poverty,
and her rigid habits of parsimony were regarded by the charitable as
the shifts of indigence. She had been an old inhabitant of the city,
but all her relatives were poor, and one of them had long been an
inmate of the workhouse. There were but few who, knowing these
circumstances, did not pity poor old Joanna Horrel, the apple-woman,
of Exeter; and loose halfpence were often quietly dropped into her
fruit-basket. These tributes of compassion were always carefully
hoarded up, and however much she obtained by such means, she never
altered her appearance, never lived more generously, never indulged
herself in luxuries or comforts at home, and never once thought of
her poor relative in the poor-house. In the year 1789, Joanna had
grown old, and her span of life was at an end. Her relatives came to
fulfil the last duties for the dead, and on searching her room, hid
here and there in cracks and corners, behind bricks and under the
flooring, they discovered a fortune of near ten thousand pounds.



CHAPTER XI: THE INSANITY OF AVARICE.

Avarice in the Insane—Curious Anecdotes of Lunatics—The Miser of St.
Petersburg—His singular Life, and enormous Wealth—His Loan to
Catharine, Empress of Russia—The Miser's Watch-dog—Its death—The
Miser becomes his own Housedog to save the cost of another—Col.
Dogherty of the Royal Marines—His singular character—Michael Dudley,
the Miser, and his one hundred pound note—The Miser of Bloomsbury—
Sheldon, the Miser of Kentish Town—Indications of Insanity—The
effects of Avarice on the Mind—Avarice a prolific cause of Insanity,
&c.

     Like all other faculties and propensities of the human mind, the
mania to acquire sometimes becomes a mental disease, and outsteps the
control of the better feelings. The asylums for the insane contain
numerous and remarkable instances of the morbid workings of this
ignoble love of gold. Wretches of the most abject misery—imbecile and
insane—will sometimes display the utmost craft and circumspection in
the gratification of this ruling passion of their minds. As a
monomania, it is too lamentably common; for we must regard the man,
who, whilst in possession of an ample fortune, still strives by the
most sordid parsimony, and the most disreputable cunning, to increase
his hoards, as one whose mind is impaired, or whose passion for gold
has produced a mental aberration. The proprietor of a private lunatic
asylum once related to us some singular anecdotes of this passion, as
manifested by his unfortunate patients. One of them had been a noted
miser years before he became an inmate of the asylum; and a sudden
and unforeseen loss which he had sustained, was supposed to have been
the cause of his insanity. His whole soul had been centred in his
gold, and deprived of his treasure, his mind became a total wreck; in
his lucid intervals he would grow desponding, and abandon himself to
the most lamentable despair; he would pine and fret; sob like a child
deprived of its bauble, and then, in the paroxysm of his grief, rave
into frantic madness; clutch hold of his keepers and denounce them as
robbers, and seeking some worthless object that happened to be at
hand, he would guard it with the most tenacious ferocity, declaring
that it was his bag of gold, and that he would rather part with life,
than part with that. Another poor wretch used to wander about the
garden of the asylum in search of pebbles, which happened by their
rotundity to call up to his mind the recollection of coin; these he
would seek for with persevering industry, and, when discovered, he
would secrete them about his clothes with the greatest caution, and
after a time bury them in a particular spot in the garden, and he
always manifested the most intense anxiety if any of the other 
patients happened to wander near the place of his secret hoards. He
was generally harmless in his manner, but he was always excited into
passion, if by any chance his pursuits were interfered with, or his
fictitious coin disturbed by his unfortunate companions.

     Many years ago, there lived in a large, cheerless and
dilapidated, old house in St. Petersburg, a wretched miser. He
confined himself to one room, and left the rest of the rambling
edifice to moulder into ruin; he cared for no comfort, and deprived
himself even of those things which the poorest regard as the
necessaries of life; he seldom lit a fire to repel the dampness,
which, hung on the walls of his solitary chamber, and a few worthless
objects of furniture was all that the room contained. Yet to this
singular being the Empress Catherine the Second owed a million of
roubles. His cellar, it was said, contained casks full of gold, and
packages of silver were stowed away in the dismal corners of his
ruinous mansion. He was one of the richest men in Russia. He relied,
for the safety of his hoards, upon the exertions of a huge mastiff,
which he had trained to bark and howl throughout the night, to strike
terror into the hearts of thieves. The miser outlived the dog; but he
disliked to part with any portion of his treasure in the purchase of
another cur, and he resolved to save his money by officiating as his
own watch dog. Every morning, and every evening, would that insane
old man wander about his dismal habitation, barking and howling in
imitation of his recent sentinel.

     Perhaps a more decided manifestation of the insanity of avarice
was exemplified in the life of Lieutenant-Colonel O'Dogherty, of the
Royal Marines. He died in February, 1819, near Landrake. For more
than twenty years he was in the habit of visiting Plymouth Market,
and he always made his appearance, mounted on an old hack as lean as
Rosinante. The singularity of his dress, and the eccentricity of his
manners, soon obtained for him the reputation of a miser. He
generally wore a nightcap, tied round his head, which had evidently
been for years a stranger to the wash-tub; an old hat, quite bare of
nap, and brimless; a rough waistcoat, the original texture of which
it would have puzzled the most sagacious to have discovered—so
numerous were its patches and so various its hues; a greasy leather
pair of breeches; an old coat, which no Jew would have rescued from
the kennel, and a pair of shattered shoes bound round with huge hay-
bands, formed the usual habiliments of this sin-gular character. On
his last visit to Plymouth, a week or two before his death, thus
arrayed, he seated himself on the steps of the Plymouth Telegraph
Office to eat an apple, which probably, was designed to satisfy his
hunger during the greatest portion of the day. Yet, whilst practising
this wretched penury, he possessed freehold property of considerable
value, amply sufficient to have maintained him in comfort, and in a
dignity befitting the squire of his village. He chose, however, to
forsake the family mansion, and took up his abode in a small cottage
in its immediate vicinity. A most wretched hovel it was, without a
pane of glass in the windows, but with innumerable inconvenient
apertures in the roof. He always kept the door closely barred and
blocked up, and he used to get in and out of his house through the
bedroom window, with the aid of a ladder; this he would at night draw
up after him, and seek his repose on a bundle of dirty straw, huddled
into one corner of his room.

     We may observe too, indications of an unsound mind in the
senseless manner in which some misers have been known to gratify
their love of hoarding; in the case of John Little, and several
others, mentioned in our former chapters, we have seen the miser
gratifying his propensity to hoard, when, by so doing, he necessarily
entailed a pecuniary loss. We have a curious illustration of this, in
the case of Michael Dudley, an Irishman, who was robbed in the year
1831. It seems, from the report of the trial of the thieves, which
appeared in the papers of the time, that he had been robbed of an old
pocket book, containing notes to the value of one hundred and sixty
pounds, among which there was one note for a hundred pounds, that he
had carried about with him for seventeen years. He came possessed of
it by a legacy, and nothing could induce him to part with it for a
note of more modern currency, or to place it out at interest. This
old man had been for many years a boot cleaner at the Castle Tavern,
in Exeter-street, Dublin, and he was constantly seen wandering about
the streets, dressed in a miserable tattered suit of clothes, which,
many years ago, had been given to him out of charity. He seldom
purchased a meal, but strove to satisfy the cravings of nature by
pickings from the refuse of the market stalls, or by begging a few
scraps of the inhabitants. He lived in a garret, in a dismantled,
uninhabited old tenement, in Sycamore-lane, a perfect slave to self-
sacrifice and self-denial.

     A rich capitalist, named M. Thibaudard, died a few years ago, at
Paris, leaving an immense sum of money; some of which was found
hoarded away in the most unaccountable places rendering it doubtful
whether the whole of his property was ever discovered. He had a
residence in the country, but he hired a room in Paris, which he used
frequently to visit. He died, and left his wife residuary legatee. A
few weeks after his death, she went to Paris, to the room before
alluded to. The weather was cold, and she had a fire lit, but as the
smoke poured from the fireplace, and filled the room, she sent for a
sweep, who examined the chimney, where, at a considerable height, he
found a leather valise, containing twenty thousand francs, gold
coins, and a large quantity of precious stones. It is evident, that
the man who would thus place his property in jeopardy, must, as it
were, have been on the verge of insanity.

     Some two or three years ago, a miserable old man died in the
metropolis, leaving behind him an ample fortune. For many years he
had been in the habit of rising at an early hour in the morning, and
sallying out to search the streets for bits of bone or rags; he
always bent his steps towards Covent Garden market, and from the
refuse of the stalls, he would carry home a quantity of fragments of
potatoes, carrots, and other vegetables, which, in the course of the
day, he would stew down, and form into a dainty dish. He always
walked along the streets with his eyes upon the ground; no pin
escaped his vigilant eye; no piece of paper was passed without being
examined; no fragment of twine, no stray remnant of cloth or rag, was
allowed to repose in the kennel; sometimes he was rewarded by the
discovery of some article of greater value, and he used to boast that
he had found several pieces of jewellery in the vicinity of the
theatres. He lived in a room, in a house in Gilbert-street,
Bloomsbury; the house was his own, and he had several others in the
same street, and considerable sums of money in the funds, or stowed
away in his own house. He seldom purchased provisions, but managed to
eke out a subsistence from his gatherings in the streets; sometimes
he bought a stale loaf, or a small quantity of butter, at a
chandler's shop in the neighbourhood, and his constant remark was,
"never mind how rank it is, so as it is cheap." In this case, avarice
became so strong, as to overwhelm the mind, and the old man. died at
an advanced age, imbecile and insane.

     A few weeks ago, an old miser, of the name of Sheldon, died at
Blandford-place, Kentish Town. He has left it is supposed, about
twenty thousand pounds; yet this miserable slave to mammon would
wander about the adjacent streets, to pick up any rubbish that could
be turned into money, or any fragments that would help to form a
meal; he had often been seen pick up bits of bread or potato from the
mud in the streets, and carry them home, when he would wash them, and
afterwards eat them with a relish; he was insensible to all notions
of refinement or decency, and for twenty years he never allowed his
room to be swept. He seldom wore a hat, and in the coldest weather he
refused to allow himself a coat. He never washed his face but once a
month, and then only when urged to do so by constant importunities.
Often have we seen him perambulating the roads about Kentish Town,
with a crowd of boys behind him, hooting and exasperating the old
miser into a passion, but even in the midst of his perplexity, and
when his rage was at its height, if a bone or a piece of rag happened
to meet his eye, he would forget his passion and his tormentors in
his eagerness to obtain it. Habits of parsimony seem conducive to
longevity, for he died at the advanced age of eighty-five. He had no
relations that have yet been discovered, and his ample fortune is
destined to be locked up in Chancery, or to go to strangers whom he
had never seen.

     Such instances are evident indications of insanity; we behold in
them the moral powers of the mind; all those social faculties which
elevate man so immeasurably above the brute, ruled despotically by an
inordinate passion to acquire. There are few passions, indeed, the
abuse of which so endanger the equilibrium of the human mind, as that
of avarice, and, in a great commercial country like our own, the
prevalence of this feeling leads to incalculable misery, both
individually and nationally. The endless solicitude—the feverish
excitement—the harassing competition—the speculating nature of
commercial enterprise, and the wear and tear incidental to these
things, make the young man forget the dreams of youth, and the old
man the remembrance of the tomb. The soul becomes enthralled by
schemes of gain; social joys and domestic duties are forgotten; like
an ill-regulated clock, the countenance bears false evidence of
years; premature wrinkles, lines of anxious thought, point to a
premature old age, and to an early grave. We are not indifferent to
the blessing of commerce; we are not insensible of the necessity for
exertion which exists, and we have no word of blame for those
struggling to obtain an honourable livelihood. But, without
arrogating to ourselves the office of a monitor, we would gently
remind him, who has allowed avarice to usurp the place of legitimate
enterprise, of the perils which he is weaving around him. Let him
think for a moment, of the fiery ordeal through which he must pass to
accomplish his schemes of avarice. Let him dwell for a moment upon
the sacrifice of peace of mind, on the loss of health, on the nights
of unquiet sleep, on the torturing disappointments, on the anxious
fears, and the almost certain fate of an early death which the lust
for gold entails. Let him then cast up the profits of this misery and
toil; draw up within his mind a balance sheet, debit to himself on
the one side, the probable consequences which we have enumerated, and
credit to himself on the other, the bags of gold which peradventure
he may accumulate; the interest they may produce in the few short
years which he may have to live; the sum total of the fortune which
he will be able to leave for his heir to spend. Weigh both sides,
examine every item, and strike a balance. Choose between bags of
unused gold, an unquiet life, an early grave; or a healthy life, a
peaceful old age, and a happy death-bed.

     It may, perhaps, influence the decision of those who will
condescend to draw up, within their minds, such a balance sheet, to
know that no propensity or faculty is so liable to disease as that of
acquisitiveness; that the inordinate pursuit of wealth produces more
mental dissolution, more mental calamities, and more insanity, than
does the abuse of any other passion of the human mind. In a table,
compiled by M. Esquirol, it appeared that one hundred and sixty-four
cases of insanity bore the following proportions: fifty of them were
merchants, thirty-three were military men, twenty-five were students,
twenty-one administrateurs, ten were advocates, eight artists, four
chemists, four were doctors, four were farmers, three were sailors,
and two were engineers. This preponderance of merchants, or of those
manifesting most actively the love of gain, and the most eager in the
pursuit of wealth, was fully borne out by an examination of the
patients in other lunatic asylums. Merchants formed by fax the
largest pro-portion of the insane in all the establishments. M.
Fodere attributes this circumstance to the "chances of speculation,
which keep the mind constantly on the stretch, and which in a moment,
give or take away a fortune." Reader! remember these things when
draw-ing up your balance sheet.



CHAPTER XII: AVARICE AS AN HEREDITARY PASSION.

A puzzle for philosophers—Illustrated cases of avarice as an
hereditary passion—John Elwes—Daniel Dancer—Miss Vooght—
Acquisitiveness as a family failing—Brothers Jackson, the Two Misers
of Reading—Brothers Palmer, the Two Misers of Witney—Old Jardine, the
Miser of Cambridge, and his two sons; a singular instance of avarice
as a family vice, &c.

     THERE are few subjects upon which it is so difficult to form an
opinion as that of the hereditary nature of the human passions. There
are few subjects that have so puzzled philosophers, and few that have
so effectually baffled the sagacity of science. There is one point
which has been satisfactorily proved, viz. that if the qualities of
the human mind are hereditary, they are not always derived from the
father. But this fact adds to the perplexity of the question,
inasmuch as it becomes necessary, before we advance facts against the
doctrine of the hereditary nature of the human feelings, to ascertain
as to the peculiar disposition and temperament of both parents. Thus,
the fact of a miser begetting a generous and noble-hearted son, is no
proof that he might not have derived these good qualities as an
hereditary birthright from the mother. Corroborative illustrations
therefore, are of more weight, since we have less difficulty in
applying them, and tracing the analogy between the disposition of the
parent, and the disposition of the child. The force of example, it
may be said, may have much to do with quickening this passion into
life; but an example not the most prepossessing, could never be so
warmly embraced had not the natural inclinations a tendency to hoard,
and to coincide with the habits of the miser.

     The reader will perhaps remember among our examples the case of
John Overs, whose daughter was so unlike the father; or that of John
Mounsey, whose son manifested so generous a disposition: but it must
be remembered, that in neither case have we any information relative
to the disposition of the mother. Our facts which bear on the other
side of the question are somewhat stronger. That of Daniel Dancer,
and his sister; of the three Misses Vooght, and of the Elwes', are
singular instances of acquisitiveness as a family failing. The family
of the Dancers were notoriously parsimonious, and were all eager and
covetous after gold. Miss Dancer equalled her brother in the art of
saving; and another brother who survived this miserly pair for many
years, is said, if such a thing could be possible, to have been even
more penurious than Daniel Dancer himself.[Note: Annual Register,
Vol. XXXVI, for the year 1794.]

     The case of John Elwes is one deserving of some attention; for
when we learn that the mother of Elwes was an example of penury
almost unequalled by her son; that with one hundred thousand pounds
which she possessed from her husband, she literally starved herself
to death; and when moreover we learn that Sir Harvey Elwes her
brother, was one of the most extraordinary misers on record, who, to
amass wealth spent sixty years of his life in a state of seclusion
which an ancient Coenobite might have envied: we cannot but regard
the life of John Elwes as a singular and memorable fact, to
substantiate the doctrine of the innateness and hereditary nature of
the human passions. In the lives of some misers, we have seen this
propensity to acquire engrossing all other feelings, captivating, as
it were the very soul; but in Elwes we observe some good qualities;
signs of generosity, and a proneness to forgive injuries at which
other men would have been unmerciful. His life in fact, is a record
of constant struggling and wrestlings between passions, which at
first sight appear inconsistent, as the promptings, of one mind, and
which we should scarcely believe could exist in the same man, did not
science and experience teach us how incongruous are the propensities
of the human mind.

     The indication of avarice sometimes observed in infancy and
youth would lead us to believe in the innateness of the human
propensities. All who have been in the habit of observing the gradual
opening of youthful minds—all who have devoted their energies to the
education of the rising generation, must have observed how powerfully
will the spirit of covetousness sometimes sway the actions of youth,
long before the vices or the cunning of the world could have excited
such feelings; and will, on reading the following lines of Crabbe,
call to mind the remembrance of many with whom they have come in
contact:

Lo! one who walks apart although so young
He lays restraint upon his eyes and tongue;
Nor will he into scrape or dangers get,
And half the school are in the stripling's debt;
Suspicious, timid, he is much afraid
Of trick or plot,—he dreads to be betrayed;
He shuns all friendship, for he finds they lend,
When lads begin to call each other friend.
Crabbe's Borough.

     Of acquisitiveness as a family failing, the case of John and
James Jackson is a curious illustration. These two misers lived
during the middle of the last century at a village in the vicinity of
Reading. At the age of twenty they each became possessed of riches.
Their passion to acquire was too strong to allow them to enjoy these
acquisitions, and their only pleasure was in hoarding up, and
scraping to add to their abundant store. Riches, instead of a
blessing, became in their hands a curse. From principles of economy,
and from congeniality of disposition, they both lived together. They
hired one miserable dirty room, into which for fifty years no human
being except themselves was allowed to enter: they lived so
penuriously that they denied themselves the necessaries of life; and
their appearance was so squalid, that passengers in the streets
bestowed their charity upon them, which these unworthy wretches were
never known to refuse. Nothing could have been more sordid, and
nothing more miserable, than such a life: yet perhaps by thus feeding
their ruling passion, they derived some enjoyment from their
existence. When at the respective ages of ninety-three and eighty-
seven the two brothers were taken ill, and languishing for a week,
they both died on the same day, leaving behind them an accumulation
of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

     A similar instance of fraternal misery is recorded in the
Cambridge Chronicle of December 26, 1767. Two brothers named John and
Joseph Palmer lived together in a most parsimonious manner at Witney,
in Oxfordshire. .Although possessing considerable wealth, they
indulged themselves in no comforts—inhabited a wretched attic—kept no
servant—wore rags instead of clothes, and in their domestic
arrangements were prodigies of filth and penury. They were both
bachelors, and detested even the very sight of women; they would
never permit one to clean out their chamber; and as they never took
the trouble to fulfil that duty themselves, their apartment was a
harbour for vermin, and a receptacle for dust and rubbish. In April
1767 they were both taken ill; and as in the case just quoted above,
both died on the same day within a few minutes of each other. Having
dwelled together in life, they were not separated in death.

     Many years ago, there lived, at Cambridge, a miserly old couple
of the name of Jardine: they had two sons, the father was a perfect
miser, and at his death one thousand guineas were discovered secreted
in his bed. The two sons grew up as parsimonious as their sire. When
about twenty years of age, they commenced business at Cambridge as
drapers; and they continued there until their death. During forty
years, they never had their house cleaned but once, and that was on
the occasion of their mother's death. They were strangers to filial
love, and the loss of a parent produced no sorrow. They begrudged the
last tribute of affection; and, to save a trifling fee, they laid out
the corpse themselves, and bargained for her interment on the lowest
scale. The establishment of the Messrs. Jardine was the most dirty of
all the shops in Cambridge. Customers seldom went in to purchase,
except perhaps fit of curiosity. The brothers were most disreputable
looking beings; for although surrounded with gay apparel, as their
staple in trade, they wore the most filthy rags themselves. It is
said that they had no bed, and, to save the expense of one, always
slept on a bundle of packing cloths under the counter. In their
housekeeping they were penurious in the extreme. A joint of meat did
not grace their board for twenty years. They always had an eye to
business; and if a shopkeeper or a farmer happened to purchase of
them, they would enquire their address, and go a mile or two to
purchase of them in re-turn a few eggs or half a pint of beer; yet
they always observed the utmost caution, lest, as they used to
observe, any of their other customers should be offended. When the
first of the brothers died, the other, much to his surprise, found
large sums of money which had been secreted even from him. They both
died suddenly and within a few months of each other. They left about
eight thousand pounds, the whole of which, with the exception of a
twenty pound legacy, was left to a neighbour, who, on one or two
occasions had shown them some little kindness, and sent them now and
then a dinner.

     We do not pretend, from these facts, to build a theory or to
maintain a new doctrine: we offer them simply as facts and
illustrations, which may be useful in forming an opinion. We do not
pretend to think them sufficient to prove the passion of avarice
hereditary, but we regard them as examples of some weight in favour
of that opinion. We would, in short, rather that our readers judged
for themselves, than that we should point out the way that we would
have them judge. The subject is a difficult one, and we think it rash
and somewhat un-seemly to decide prematurely upon that, which so many
great men have been unable to decide, and so many philosophers have
been unable to prove.



CHAPTER XIII: MAMMON WORSHIP; ITS SACRIFICES AND REWARDS.

Love of Speculating—The Tulip Mania in Holland—The South Sea Stock
bubble; its origin, &c.—Its demoralizing influence—The Railway Mania—
Illustrations of avarice—Anecdote from Madame de Genlis of a miser
and a Surgeon—Sacrifices Of the parsimonious—The rewards of Mammon,
&c.

     WITH the advancement of science and the progress of
civilization, the general tone of society has not proportionately
improved. The age abounds with many illustrations of progress, of
vast enterprise—of genius and of talent. But the mainspring of all
this activity—of all these gigantic schemes, admirable inventions,
and discoveries, is evidently the love of gain. Napoleon designated
us a nation of shopkeepers; could he now describe us, he would
designate us a nation of speculators; competition has rendered the
usual come of trade in-adequate to satisfy ambition, and men look
eagerly for some speculation by which their riches may be augmented
with greater speed, they enter into any scheme however wild, and into
any project however improbable; some few grow rich on the ruin of the
many, and votaries of Mammon become more numerous. If we call to mind
the bubbles which at various times have excited the cupidity of
avarice, we shall be surprised that men have not learnt in their
failure a little wisdom to protect them against such fascinations for
the future. The tulip mania, which raged among the Dutch in the year
1634, will show how the reason will become dazzled with the hope of
gain. We regard now, that singular infatuation as a species of
madness; and we can scarcely credit, although the fact is well
authenticated, that men could have been so absurd as to invest four
thousand florins in the purchase of a single bulb. A tulip, called
the Admiral Liefken was worth, at the market value, four thousand
four hundred florins; and the Semper Augustus produced five thousand
five hundred florins in cash. Holland was the El Dorado of
enthusiasts. In 1636 the tulip mania was at its height: regular
offices were established in the cities of Holland. Stock jobbers were
seized with the prevailing epidemic, dealt largely in tulips, and
they became a favourite species of stock, and everyone was eager to
invest their fortunes in Dutch bulbs; men threw up their trade, and
rushed to the tulip marts with their capital. The wealthy parted with
houses and broad lands for a few bulbs. Legitimate trade was
neglected, and the public mind was in a continual ferment; every day
reports reached the ears of anxious tradesmen and poor artisans of
some case of sudden fortune, of some needy man made rich by the lucky
speculation of a day. Laws were drawn up with legislative gravity for
the due regulation of tulip dealers, and tulip buyers; and everyone
seemed to be convinced that the golden trade in tulips would last for
ever. By and bye when they had their tulips instead of lands and
tenements; instead of cash in the funds, or capital in trade, some
few found a time to think—thought soon restored the reason, and
cooled the brain; and those who were wise enough to think, made
speedy sales. There were more tulips, but fewer buyers—the bubble
burst—a panic spread, and thousands mourned over ruin and desolation—
over cheerless homes, and beggared prospects—the once ample fortune
of many an opulent merchant—of many a thriving trader, and
comfortable artisan, was now contained in a few bulbs, which no one
cared to buy. The South Sea bubble is another lamentable instance of
the spirit of avarice as displayed in speculation. This company, as
our readers are doubtless aware, was first proposed in. the year
1711, and was founded upon the supposition, that the English would be
allowed to trade to the coast of Peru. In the year 1720, the scheme
was brought before the public, Sir John Blunt drew up the plans, and
submitted them to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A company was
formed, and a bill brought before parliament. By circulating
favourable reports, the project soon excited the attention of the
public. For five days the books of the company were opened for a
subscription of one million, at the rate of three hundred pounds for
every hundred pound of capital. Eager crowds came to invest their
money; in a few days the stock was worth three hundred and fifty per
cent, and it ultimately rose to one thousand pounds. The rage for
speculation now commenced; new companies started up every day, with
schemes as chimerical as the South Sea delusion. Some, in fact had no
scheme at all; and actually issued prospectuses, and solicited
subscriptions for a stock, the intention and purpose of which they
did not condescend to explain; one cunning rogue pretended that he
had discovered a plan, by which fortune would be certain to follow;
he promised to publish the particulars in a month; in the meantime,
two guineas were to be paid to entitle the person to a subscription
of one hundred pounds. The project, wild as it was, was not too wild
for the age; one thousand dupes paid in one day their first
instalment, and the next day the swindler had decamped. This spirit
of speculation was soon to be at an end. The noble and the wealthy,
royalty and the poor, bishops, clergymen, doctors, authors,
merchants, and artisans, all dabbled in the South Sea Stock, during
the memorable year 1720. But one day in September the stock suddenly
fell; fear filled every heart, and every one rushed into the mart
with their stock; on the 29th, it went down from one thousand per
cent to one hundred and fifty. Merchants closed their warehouses, and
bankers in disguise sought refuge in other kingdoms. Numbers were
ruined past all redemption; despair, insanity, or suicide, was the
fate of thousands; and the public morals, and the course of commerce
and industry, received a check which it took years to overcome.

     Such are the delusions which the avarice of a people will
sometimes lead them into. We might easily produce other examples; we
might point to the era of lotteries, and show their demoralizing
influence on society. In recent times—in the spurious companies of
the year 1826, and in the railway mania of the last few years, we
might also point to striking illustrations of this Mammon worship,
and of the wild enthusiasm of Mammon's votaries.

     But this eager pursuit of wealth too often entails misery and
retribution. It is a significant fact, that in times of such
adventure and speculation cases of insanity are very numerous, and
the bills of mortality exhibit a fearful increase. The alternate
hopes of a golden future, and the fear of beggary and ruin, haunt the
fevered mind both day and night; and when disappointment comes, as it
too often does, with loss of fortune and loss of peace, the
infatuated worshipper of Mammon sinks into a premature grave, or
broods over his loss with a mind in which the light of reason is no
more.

     Such are the effects of avarice as exemplified in the spirit of
gambling and speculation; and we have seen, in our previous chapters,
the effects of avarice as exemplified in the spirit of parsimony. The
one will sacrifice to Mammon, wealth, in the hopes of future golden
blessings; the latter will sacrifice health, comfort, and the soul,
to retain that which he has already received. Rather than part with
his gold, we have seen the miser die of actual starvation; and in the
cases of Sir William Smyth and Vandille it has been shown how
insignificant is pain or the fear of danger to the miser, when
compared with the torture which he feels at parting with his hoards.

     Madame de Genlis relates a curious anecdote in her "Souvenirs de
Felicie L***," of a rich miser, curiously illustrating the sacrifices
which avarice will make to Mammon. M. de C*** was very rich, but had
become blind by a cataract which had formed on both his eyes; he
dwelled in the remotest part of Languedoc, and he went to Paris to
consult a surgeon, who told him that he must be couched, for the
success of which he would be answerable. M. de C*** enquired what
would be the expense of the operation. "Fifty livres," replied
Graujean. M. de C*** loudly remonstrated against the charge, which he
protested was enormous, and offered to make a bargain to lower the
price; the surgeon was inflexible, and with an ill grace M. de C***
was compelled to submit. Some days afterwards the surgeon completed
the operation on one eye, when having removed the bandages, M. de
C*** exclaimed with transport that his sight was perfectly restored.
"Come then," said the oculist, "let us proceed to the other eye."
"Stay," replied the miser, "you ask fifty guineas for the whole
operation, that is five-and-twenty for each eye; now as I see quite
as well as is necessary, I shall content myself with one eye; to pay
so much for the other would be extravagance, seeing that it would be
a luxury only: there are your five-and-twenty guineas!"

     For these sacrifices, what are the rewards of Mammon worship? We
refer to the lives of those miserable objects of self-inflicted
penury, which we have related in our former chapters, as a fit answer
to such a question. Youth without the joys of youth, manhood without
the purposes and duties of life, old age without one ray of solace or
consolation, and death on a squalid bed of misery, unattended and
unbedewed with the tear of affection, are the rewards which Mammon
vouchsafes to his anxious followers.



CHAPTER XIV: CONCLUSION.

The Lives of Misers teach us that no propensity can be abused without
entailing its own punishment—The Effects of Avarice—Its appearance in
Youth—Manhood—and Old Age—Concluding Remarks, &C.

     WE imagine that the most inquisitive will not be dis-satisfied
at the scantiness of our facts. We have given more perhaps, than some
will care to read, but we have not given them without feeling assured
that they will be found useful to others than those, who merely seek
amusement from their perusal. We flatter ourselves that as
delineations of the human mind, as manifestations of the abuse of one
of the propensities of our nature, they may prove instructive to the
philosopher. The phrenologist will find among our anecdotes many
illustrations, and perhaps many corroborations of his science. It was
the doctrine of Gall and Spurzheim that no mental power could be
abused or rendered over excited by immoderate gratification, without
entailing its own punishment as a necessary consequence; and
certainly in the wretched lives, in the pining, anxious, endless
cares; in the remarkable deaths of the votaries of avarice whose
lives and vices we have endeavoured to display, we observe an awful
retribution follow their sins against nature's laws.

     Some of our examples would seem to favour this doc-trine of the
innateness of the human passions; for the passion of avarice is found
peeping forth in infancy, triumphant in manhood, all-absorbing in old
age, and sometimes strong in death. It is observed to be the most
powerful when least prompted by necessity, or by the fear of future
want. Abuse seems to grow with abuse—activity becomes more active
when encouraged by gratification: the passion of avarice expands as
it is fed. The miser with a moderate store of wealth, may feel that
to double his riches, would be to satisfy his cravings; but he
deludes himself: they are doubled, and with the augmentation of
riches, he discovers an augmentation of desire. His first ardent wish
now ap-pears insignificant, and he feels more ambitious, more
restless, and more greedy for acquisitions than ever. Gratification
has fed and stimulated his avarice, and in-creased his ideas of
wealth: he thinks himself poor, although he has doubled his fortune.

     We have seen, by many deplorable examples, how the gratification
of this propensity absorbs all other feelings—how the very soul, and
the purposes, and duties of life are sacrificed to subdue the
insatiable thirst of this inordinate passion. We have seen how the
slave of avarice becomes the most despicable—the most grovelling, and
the most worthless of human kind. We have seen how, when blinded by
this lust for gold, affection has been extinguished; honour and
rectitude have been undermined; social duties have been neglected;
and domestic ties have been disregarded. We have seen how, even on
the bed of death, the miser has been still greedy to acquire; how,
whilst on the very threshold of that grave, which would soon render
back his body to its parent earth; he has been painfully anxious to
increase the heap of dross, which his avarice had already
accumulated; how all thought of the endless future, all thought of
the vast eternity into which he was about to enter was discarded, in
gratifying in his last dying moments this ruling passion of his soul.
We have seen the miser, whilst neglecting his own physical
preservation, and refusing medical aid that he might save a paltry
fee, hurried into eternity; and we have read that some have died,
repining amidst the agonies of death, that they could not live longer
to acquire more! We have in fact, seen how the miser to gratify his
senseless craving for gold,

"Throws up his interest in both worlds—
First starved in this, then damned in that to come."

     Yet, like other powers and propensities of the human mind, the
propensity to acquire has its legitimate sphere of usefulness,
capable of adding to the blessings and the purposes of life. To its
healthy exercise we are indebted for many of those perilous
enterprises which have resulted in the discovery of unknown regions,
to those vast schemes of art, which have enabled us to span the world
with iron roads, and to plough the deep with untiring swiftness. The
love of worldly gain, honourably and nobly made manifest, will act
sometimes as a lever to lift the soul to gigantic efforts, and to
stimulate the sleeping brain to effusions of immortal worth. God
gives us the elements of mental action, but has left it to ourselves
to train by education, these elements into a virtuous and honourable
course. If we totally neglect the propensity to acquire, we become
the spendthrift; if we exert it into undue activity we become the
miser. Observation and science would lead us to imagine that some are
born with a preponderance of this propensity; whilst others are only
endowed with a moderate share. If such observations are correct,—if
the deductions drawn from these facts are true, the responsibilities
of education are doubled. It becomes the solemn duty of the monitor
of youth to discourage that propensity in the one, by displaying the
sinfulness of avarice and to encourage prudence in the other, by
teaching how necessary is economy in the affairs of life.

     And now, in parting, we cannot but express a hope that we have
done something more than amuse the curious reader. We shall feel well
repaid if we have done this; for we look upon it as a pleasant thing
to make ourselves pleasant unto others; but we hope that whilst
exciting a smile on the countenance, we may also have aroused a
better feeling in the heart, have made our readers less prone to
regard so tenaciously their hoards, and to have sown a disposition
within them to bestow in charity a part of that of which they may
have an abundance. We should, indeed, be amply repaid if our little
book should be the means Of converting one soul from the idolatry of
Mammon to the faith of brotherly love, if it should be instrumental
in softening one heart, which had become hardened by avarice; or if
it should be the cause of inspiring one poor but improvident man with
the wish to save, or one rich, but avaricious man, with the desire to
give. It is indeed, a great thing in the eyes of the world to be a
man of wealth; but it is a still greater thing in the sight of
heaven, to be a man of charity.
FINIS.