MONEY FOR NOTHING

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 6089, 22 December 1906, Page 3

MONEY FOR NOTHING

CONDON, November 9. Human nature being what it is, the world looks aekance at the man who starts giving money away lavishly and indiscriminately in the street. Just at present C'ovent Garden is greatly agitated about a certain mysterious stranger who sauntered into the market one day this week and began handing out gold and £5 notes to porters, flowergirls, and newsboys. He was a tall, elderlv man, with a grey moustache, and dressed in light clothes and a bowler hat. "Say, my good fellow,” ho said to a porter named Mullins, who was unloading boxes from a wagon, “how large afamily have you got?” “I've got four children and a wife,” said Mullins. "Here then, take this,” said the stranger, pressing four £23 banknotes into Mullins’s hands. "You might give a little of it to some of the other fellows." Incredulous at first, Mullins consulted others, and found the money was good. A large crowd gathered, and Mullins subsequently distributed .£4O of his gift in half-sovereigns. Meanwhile the philanthropist was continuing his career of generosity. He stopped a newsboy. "How many papers Lave you there, my son?” asked the stranger.. The boy, according to his own story, on relinquishing his papers, found himself in possession of £5. Another boy received 8s Gd for papers. "Now, I want some of those handkerchiefs,” said the philanthropist to a vendor. "Six of them, please. Here’s £3, and you may keep the change." Two porters each received £5. Then the man of gold approached a flower stand, where he bought a bouquet for £5. By this time the spectacle of a man giving money away had attracted a clnmoroils mob of men and boys, all frantic to share in the wholesale benevolence. Cries of "There he is! That’s him!” arose as the crowd tumbled and pushed to get closer. "There’s the man that’s giving the mono; away!” Then followed appeals for aid. "Say, mister. I’m poor! I’ve got a family, too.. I ain’t got no work. X can use £5. Hut the stranger showed an antipathy toward solicitations . “I asked him,” said Joseph Sullivan, "but he wouldn’t give rao anything till I shouted ‘Good luck!’ Then he gave me 6d, which I think was the smallest sum he gave anybody.”

Eluding the pressing attentions of the crowd, the stranger disappeared, and was seen no more that day. But the newspapers ran him to earth in the evening. He turns out to be a Mr William Yates, of Blackburn, a wealthy bachelor, regarded by his friends as "slightly Seven years-ago ho gave money away in similar fashion outside the Hoyal Thames Yacht Club. To ft reporter who interviewed him Mr Tates remarked modestly that hi* little asaursion to Oovaot Garden was "really not worth mentioning."