STEADY YOUTH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20870, 9 November 1929, Page 15

STEADY YOUTH.

HE INHERITS A FORTUNE. DOESN’T WANT TO SPEND IT, REMARKABLE STORY. {From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY,' October 31. Sydney was startled the other day when it read the story of one of its youths who has inherited a fortune of £50,000 and has no desire to spend it. This steady young man is John Henry Curtis, aged 19, a journeyman barber, of Croydon—and he intends to remain a journeyman barber. It sounds incredible, but this young man can calmly go on shaving and 'haircutting while £50,000 is begging for him ■to spend it. To him the fleshpots that such a sum of money could buy mean nothing. He cannot picture himself clad in spotless white on the deck of an auxiliary schooner skimming over some coralbottomed lagoon in the Islands. Nor does he want, to travel abroad, not while you can buy perfectly good picture cards of the Niagara Falls and the like. Up to date he has not given a single thought to the spending of any portion of the vast sum he has inherited “ No,” says John Henry. " That money was carefully earned, and I am going to look after it carefully.”' While fishing at Kinkumber on August 28 of this year the father of the young barber, Charles William Curtis, was accidentally drowned. He had amassed a considerable fortune in real estate and shares, and _he left the whole of his money to his son and his widow. Before he died he expressed his intention of setting his son up in business on his own account as a barber and tobacconist next year. Because •of this expressed wish, John Henry is determined to become a hairdresser on his own account, despite his fortune. He will go on just as if his father were still alive. And in the meantime he will continue to work for an employer at something above the basic wage, and this should leave his fortune intact, in case, some day, he should become unemployed. This week scores of people are rushing off to the Melbourne Cup, but John Henry will go on shaving. And he could afford the trip much betfer than many who will go to Melbourne. But John Henry is a steady youth. He is taking no chances with the £50,000. Perhaps he fears the coming of a rainy day. He is a steady youth. Hundreds of other steady youths would be glad of his job without the £50,000. , "I lost the best pal I am ever likely to have,” said John Henry, as he quietly proceeded about the business of administering a face massage to a customer. “My dad and I were great friends. He always wanted me to be steady, and for his sake I will go on just aspf he were alive. My mother and I do not intend to alter our ways of living to any great extent. She and I are quite satisfied. No, I am not going to get married until I am 35.”