MISERLINESS

Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

—James 5:3

3426 Pinched By Penny Under Car

Mrs. Sam Saddoris moved her car to get a penny that rolled beneath it. The car lurched, hit a parking meter, broke a window as it bounced against a building, rolled half a block down the sidewalk and stopped.

Damaged to the car was $102. Damage to the window and parking meter was not estimated. Police said they weren’t even sure whether Mrs. Saddoris found the penny.

3427 Collecting Short Strings

A contributor to a certain magazine wrote, “A friend of mine who was settling a relative’s estate had to go through all her belongings. The deceased had been thrifty and saved everything, carefully marking each item. My friend thought he had seen the ultimate in frugality when he discovered a package marked, “Dress snaps that do not match,” but shortly afterward he found a box labeled, “String too short to use.””

—Henry G. Bosch

3428 Judge Returns The Change

At Graham, North Carolina, Magistrate Charles W. Jones performed a marriage ceremony. When the splicing had been duly accomplished, the dusky bridegroom asked the judge what the fee was. “Oh,” responded His Honor, “Whatever you think it’s worth.”

The bridegroom dug into his pocket and solemnly handed the judge a quarter.

His Honor blinked once or twice. Then, just as solemnly, he dug into his own pocket and gave the bridegroom fifteen cents in change.

3429 Helping India’s Nizam

When in India, I saw the King Koti Palace. And I saw cartoons deriding Nizam of Hyderabad—once reckoned the richest man in the world.

After Nizam had informed the Indian government he could not contribute much to its defense effort in the China border conflict, token and ironic remittances by several “Help-the-Nizam clubs” began pouring into the King Koti Palace of the Nizam.

One Bombay girl sent him a piasa to help him in his “current financial distress.” The piasa is worth about one-fifth of a U.S. cent.

—Selected

3430 Trapped In His Cellar

The French millionaire miser, M. Foscue, in order to hide his treasure securely, dug a cave in his wine cellar, so large and deep that he could go down only with a ladder. At the entrance was a door with a spring lock, which would automatically shut itself. After some time, he disappeared. Search was made for him but to no avail. At last, his house was sold.

The purchaser of the house began to rebuild it and discovered a door in this cellar, and, descending, found him lying dead on the floor, with a candlestick nearby. His vast wealth amassed and hidden was with him. He had apparently gone into the cave, and the door accidentally closed, shutting him in. He died for lack of food. He had eaten the candle and gnawed the flesh off both his arms. Thus died this avaricious wretch in the midst of the treasure which he had accumulated.

—Foster

3431 Parable Of Pig And Cow

A rich man said to his minister, “Why is it everyone is always criticizing me for being miserly, when everyone knows that I have made provision to leave everything I possess to charity when I die?”

“Well,” said the minister, “let me tell you about the pig and the cow. The pig was lamenting to the cow one day about how unpopular he was. “People are always talking about your gentleness and your kindness,” said the pig. “You give milk and cream, but I give even more. I give bacon and ham—I give bristles and they even pickle my feet! Still no one likes me. I’m just a pig. Why is this?” The cow thought a minute, and then said: “Well, maybe it’s because I give while I’m still living.””

—Grace and Glory

3432 No Newspapers For Miser

It’s an old story, but it happens frequently. William Lyons, 87, of Brighton, England, dressed like a hobo and refused to buy a newspaper when the price went up a halfpenny. When he died, he left more than $750,000. A special bequest of $2,400 went to the bank staff who helped keep his secret.

How much happier Lyons would have been if he had not only saved his money, but given it away to help others in need! To save money is a virtue; but to hoard it is a vice.

—Morning Glory

3433 In A Charity Ward

Mrs. Carrie Wherritt, 86, lived in a ramshackle brick dwelling in a neighborhood in Detroit that was undergoing demolition to make way for an expressway. From her bed in a charity ward, she said to police officers: “All l have is in the safe at home.” It was unlocked. There the officers found $291,000 in currency which the owner was soon to leave.

3434 $11 Monthly Room Rent

Some years ago Mrs. Reva Andelman fell unconscious on a street in Chicago. She was taken to the Cook County Hospital. Astonished nurses found nearly $15,000 sewed in the lining of her shabby, dirty coat! For years she had begged for meals on the streets of Chicago and had lived in an $11-a-month room!

3435 Chicken Wire Enclosure & House

Chelistino Chiesa, seventy-three years old, lived in a seven-by-four-foot cubicle in a flophouse at 809 South State Street, Chicago. He paid twenty-five cents per day for the cubicle in which he slept, and which was enclosed by chicken wire. He lived in squalor and loneliness. He lived only to amass money which brought no joy or comfort to him or others. Those who knew him said he never treated himself to a full and enjoyable meal. He died in a charity ward in Cook County Hospital. He left a fortune of $250,000.

3436 Not Paying $5 Debt

An Associated Press dispatch from Hutchinson, Kansas, gave to the world the following story:

A ragged peddler who told a friend he didn’t have $5 to pay a debt, was found dead the next morning in his apartment here amongst littered filth—and $61,000 in bonds and currency.

The man, Ramond Mishler, 48, died of malnutrition. Police and executors confirmed a report that the money had been found in a cluttered old store building which had been converted into two dwelling units.

Detective Ed. May, who went to investigate when Mishler’s body was discovered, noticed a piece of paper sticking in a door sill. It was a $1,000 government bond. May and Patrolman Bob Adams then found $40,000 in bonds in a dresser drawer and $3,000 in currency, nearly all of it old, large size bills, in tobacco cans and a trunk. Also found were passbooks from three banks showing deposits of $8,890 and papers showing he had several thousand dollars in postal savings and in savings and loan deposits.

—W. B. Knight

3437 Potatoes And Spaghetti

Laura and Margaret Moroselli, sixty-nine and seventy years old respectively, were found starving to death in their New York City apartment. Only a blackened pan of potatoes and a partially used can of spaghetti were found in the apartment. Neither weighed over ninety pounds. Assets valued at $100,000 were found in the apartment where they lived as recluses for sixteen years. They never admitted anyone and only Margaret went out occasionally.

3438 $100 Million Yet One Old Dress

America’s most miserly millionaire was John G. Wendel who died in 1915 at his home at Fifth Avenue and 39th Street, New York City. To keep in the family the vast fortune he and his six sisters had inherited, Wendel remained a bachelor and managed to keep five of the girls unmarried and virtual prisoners in this house for 50 years. Furthermore, he instilled such frugality in his sisters that when the last one died in 1931 it was found that, while her estate amounted to more than $100,000,000, she had never had a telephone, electricity or an automobile and that her only dress was one she had made herself and worn for nearly 25 years.

3439 Eating From Bureau Drawer

Believe it or not! Chas Meynard of Bordeaux, richest landowner in France, dined 3 times a day for 60 years from an open bureau drawer in order that he could slam it shut if a guest arrived.

3440 Lonely With Quarter Million Dollars

The late Mary H. Acheson, a retired schoolteacher of Winnepeg, recently shocked her friends, relatives, and business acquaintances when the truth came out that she “had left a fortune of $250,000.” It appears that Miss Acheson, even as a child, led a self-centered existence. As a teacher she was a thorough mathematician who applied herself assiduously to the problem of making money. She regularly used the nearby bank phone because she had to pay charges at the hotel. As her fortune grew, some of it inherited from a money-obsessed uncle, she became more secretive. Self-centered, she never enjoyed her money, never spent the interest of her investments.

—Prairie Overcomer

3441 Alone With Million Dollars

From the 19th century, there died of starvation, in New York, a woman who was found to be worth upward of a million dollars. She hoarded her money and clutched it with so close and miserly a grasp that she refused to provide herself with even the necessaries of life. The case would be incredible if it were not authenticated.

—J. H. Bomberger

3442 Hoarding Even The Penny Found

Mary MacMahon, an aged widow, lived in Hollywood, Florida. When she died, officers found a fortune stashed away in her home. Detective James Hampton reported, “I’ve never counted as much money before, and possibly I never will again.”

The officers found stacks of stocks in a closet and much cash stored in cardboard boxes on the floor and shelves everywhere. The bills ranged from ones to hundreds and the find totalled $242,283.87.

Said Detective Hampton, “The queer thing about the situation was a safe in the home which was cemented to the floor. In the safe was approximately $150 in pennies. One of the pennies was carefully wrapped in paper which bore the notation: “Found shopping in Van Buren Street.”

3443 When They Tore The Hotel

They were getting ready to tear down an old New York hotel, and moved out an ancient recluse. She was Mrs. Ida Wood, age ninety-three years. They found three-quarters of a million dollars in her room. They discovered money, money, money, money hidden everywhere. From a secret pocket that she had sewed in her dress they took fifty ten-thousand-dollar bills—half a million dollars in all!

She lived in that same hotel room for fourteen years. She seldom went out. She cooked her own meals in the room, sending a boy to the store for a few cents worth of provisions at a time. And all the while she had that money with her, hidden away in strange places. Thousand-dollar bills buried in heaps of rubbish, five thousand-dollar bills under the bathtub. So much of it that some of this hidden treasure she had forgotten.

Years ago the old recluse was a reigning beauty of New York. Her husband was Benjamin Wood, a power in the city, the owner and editor of one of the most important newspapers of the time, the old New York Daily News. He was a great sporting character, Editor Wood, a mighty gambler of those gaudy years in the nineties. They tell how one night he won a hundred thousand dollars in a gambling house. When he went home he counted it out in front of his wife and gave her fifty thousand. It was all according to arrangement. She allowed him to gamble as much as he pleased, so long as he gave her half of his winnings.

At Saratoga on one occasion he broke the bank in a glittering gambling spree. He took away a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and split it half-and-half with his wife. When Editor Wood died, his widow sold his paper, the old New York Daily News. A large part of the purchase price she received in thousand-dollar bills. This was typical finance with the radiant woman who was one of the beauties of New York. It was money, always money. She got it and kept it. As for banks—no, not at all. She kept it in cash.

The years went by, Editor Wood and his former newspaper and his once-beautiful wife—they were almost forgotten. Ida Wood grew old. She lived with her money, fondled her collection of banknotes. She became a recluse, living in her hotel room and thinking up odd ways to hide her wealth. No, they said she wasn’t mad. She merely had an eccentricity. She loved to have her money near her and hide it away, in ten-thousand-dollar bills. Only the tearing down of the hotel disclosed her secret, and what a treasure hunt in the belongings of the one-time belle of New York.

3444 Epigram On Miserliness

•     A miser isn’t much fun to live with—but he sure makes a wonderful ancestor.

•     A man was miserly to the extreme and he never gave a party. One day one of his neighbors gave a party in his house. Someone saw it and asked his servant, “Is your master giving a party today?” The servant said, “If you expect my master to give a party you will have to wait until the next incarnation!” Hearing this, the master scolded the servant, saying, “Who told you to promise any dates?”

—Chinese Humor

•     A Scotchman who was taking a train trip alighted at every stop and went into the depot.

A fellow traveler observing this strange behavior, inquired.

The Scotchman explained, “I have heart trouble and my doctor says I may drop dead any minute, so I just buy a ticket from station to station.”

•     A miser sold all his possessions, made an ingot of the gold that he got for them, and hid it in a certain spot, where his own heart and thoughts were buried with it. Every day he came to gloat over his treasure. A labourer who had watched him guessed his secret, dug up the gold and carried it away; and when the miser came and found the hole empty he began to lament and pluck out his hair.

A passer-by who saw him inquired the cause of his grief, and said: “Do not be so downcast, sir. Even when you had the gold you might as well not have had it. Take a stone instead and put it in the earth, and imagine that you have the gold there. That will serve the same purpose. For as far as I can see, even when it was there you did not make any use of the gold that you possessed.”

—Fables of Aesop

See: Extravagance ; Money ; Poor.