POVERTY PREFERRED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLI, Issue 9498, 23 April 1921, Page 5

POVERTY PREFERRED.

MEN WHO REFUSE MILLIONS

" I did nothing to earn this fortune, and I was not given an opportunity to decide whether I needed it. It is mere than a man want^.' One man is oniy entitled to more than another if he needs more." , With these words Mr Charles Garland has just turned a resolute back on the quarter of a million pounds left to him. by his late father, a rich Boston financier. He declares that he prefers/ his simple life on a small farm to the luxury such unearned riches would give him. And he is only one of many men who have- similarly seornedr the gold which wealthy fathers have accumulated for them. • ■ ' ' For many years Mr John Vanderbilt, a member of one of the world's richest families, has made his home m a small cottage on the summit of the Witch's Head 1 Mountain, m Pennsylvania. Here this millionaire hermit leads his lonely life, doing his own cooking and housework, . washing his linen m a mountain stream, cultivating his vegetables, making his own bread, and replenishing his larder with the spoil of his gun aricT rod. On a small, rocky island off the Connecticut coast lives m equal isloation and penury Charles Alvord, son of an American millionaire, who, 30 years ago, turned his back on society to lead the simple life m close communion with Nature. His home is a tiny cabin built by his own harios. He pays the Government a yearly rent of a sovereign, and spends his days happily m reading and fishing. " No one comes to see me," he says, " and I go nowhere. I am always alone. lam cut off from the world as on the planet Mars; but I have found happiness. I am content to watch the battle from afar; for richeß, honours, social triumphs, and all for which men are willing to lay down their lives, are nothing to m© now." A few years ago M. Solodovnikoff, a Russian multi-millionaire, ended his days m a cottage, surrounded by dilapidated and rotting furniture. Although he was reputed to be one of the richest men m Europe, his wealth gave him no pleasure. "My gold," he once said bitterly j "has brought me nothing but misery, and I hate it." When M. Solodovnikoff was shivering m his fireless hovel, a well-known English baronet, with a rent-roll of £30,000 a year, was leading an equally sordid and wretched life m a London garret overlooking the Thames, while two of the most beautiful ancestral homes m England were waiting vainly for the coming of their lord. He pever crossed the threshold of his hermitage, and found his 'chief pleasure m papering his walls over and over again with pictures cut from the various illustrated pavers. Fifty years ago there was a no more enviable figure m Francethan M. Paul Colasson, the Parisian millionaire, whose regal entertainments were the talk and wonder of Europe. Then fell the tragic blow which laid his life m ruins. One day m 1874 his nephew, to whom he was \passionately devoted, was burnt to. death at a fancydress ball; and from that day M. Colasson was dead to the world, witb grief as his only companion. "My money was all for him," he said, m the bitterness of his soul. " Now that he has be£n taken from me I have no use for it."

For 27 years — to the day of his doath — he shut himself up m a room of his gorgeous place m Rue Galilee, living exclusively on egsrs and broad, sunnlied to him by an old servant, the only human being he ever allowed to approach him.