MEN WHO REFUSE MILLIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 90, 16 April 1921, Page 19

MEN WHO REFUSE MILLIONS.

WEALTHY PEOPLE WHO PREFER POVERTY TO RICHES. " I did nothing to earn this fortune, and I was not given an opportunity to decide whether I needed it. It is more than a mat wants. One man is only entitled to more than another if he .needs more." With these words Mr. Charles Garland has just turned a resolute brick on the quarter of a uiihlou pound* 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. BAKES HIS OWN BREAD. And he is only one of many men who have similarly scorned the gold which weultfiy fathers have accumulated for them. For many years Mr. John Vanderbllt, a member of one of the world's richest families, 'has made his home Izx a siiuill cottage on the summit of the Witch's Head Mountain, in Pennsylvania. Here this millionaire hermit leads his lonely life, doing his own cooking and housework, washing his linen in a mountain stream, ' cultivating his vegetables, making his own bread, and replenishing his larder with the , spoil of his gun and rod. On a small, rocky island off the Connect!-' cut coast lives in equal isolation and penury Charles Alvorc, son of an American millionaire, Who, thirty years ago, turned his back on society to lead the simple life In close communion with Nature. His home is a tiny cabin 'built by his own hands. He pays the Government a yearly rent of a sovereign, and spends his days happily in reading and fishing. " Xo one comes to see mc. ,1 he says, *' and I go nowhere. I am always alone. I am 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 riches, honours, social triumphs, and all for which men are willing to lay down their lives, are nothing to mc now." A few years ago M. Solodovnikoff, a Russian multi-millionaire, ended his days in a cottage, surrounded by dilapidated and rotting furniture. Although he was reputed to be one of the richest men in Europe, nis wealth gave him no pleasure. "My gold," he once said bitterly, " has brought mc nothing but misery, and I "hate it." When M. Solodovnikoff was shivering in hie flreless hovel, a well known English bnronet, with a rent-roll of £30.000 a year, was leading an equally sordid and wretcheo. life in a London garret overlooking the Thames, while two of the most beautiful ancestral homes in England were waiting vainly for the coming of their lord. He never crossed tlie threshold of his 'hermitage, and found his chief pleasure in papering his walls over and over again with pictures cut from the various illustrated papers. Fifty years ago there was a no more enviable figure in Trance than M. Paul Colasson, the Parisian millionaire, whose regal entertainments were the talk and wonder of Europe. Then fell the tragic blow wnlch laid his life in ruins. One day in 1874 nis nephew, to whom he was passionately devoted, was burnt fo-death at a fancy-dress ball; and

from that day M. Colasson was dead to the world, with grief as his only companion. '• My» money -was all for him." he said, in the bitterness of his soul. " Xow that he has been taken from mc I have no use for it." ■ For twenty-spven years—to the day of his death—he shut himself up in a room of his gorgeous palace in Rue Gnlilee, living exclusively on eggs and bread, supplied to him by an old servant, the only human being he ever allowed to approach him.