GOLDEN HERMITS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 22, 19 March 1918, Page 2

GOLDEN HERMITS.

MILLIONAIRES WHO LIVE SPARTAN LIVES FAR FROM THE MADDING THRONG.

While some man of millions find their greatest pleasure in devising ways of squandering their gold, there are others who hold their riches so lightly that thajr tain th«Jr ticks on th«n to le«*d, oi th«ir own choice tie life of tn* Spa. lan and the hermit.

Such an eccentric Croesus Js John Vanderbilt, a scion of one of the world/s wealthiest families, who some years ago left the gilded world to which he had been born to make his lonely home in a tumbledown cottage on the summit of the Witch’s Head Mountain, in Pennsylvania. Here, on his lofty eyrie, many miles removed from the nearest habitation of man, he spent his days in solitary communion with Nature and a few treasured books. THE SIMPLE LIFE. He is his own “maid of all work,” doing his own cooking and cleaning and washing ; he supplies his larder with the fish he catches and the game he shoots ; grows his own vegetables and fruit, and milks his own goat.

He never sends or receives a letter, and his only contact with the world of men is when a young farmer at intervals calls to bring him a supply of flour, eggs, and meat ; and when, once a year, he tramps, barefooted, to the nearest village to purchase a supply of corn-meal, which is his staple food. And he declares that, in spite of his loneliness, he is happier far than when he was living in his New York Palace, and flinging his gold about with a prodigal hand. On a small, rocky island off the Connecticut coast Charles Alvord, who a few years ago w'as one of the most popular and spendthrift young millionaires in the States, has for years been living the life of a “Robinson Crusoe,” sole monarch of his barren island, and, so he declares., ideally happy in his solitude, with his books, his boat, and his fishing-nets. “Nobody comes to see me,” he has confessed. “I am as cut off from the world as on the planet Mars, but I have found happiness.”

HE PREFERRED MISERY. In Petrograd there died a few years ago M. SolodovnikofS, the Tsar’s richest subject, a man who left behind him a hundred million roubles. And yet this owner of millions had spent the latter part of his life, with an old housekeeper for his only companion, in a two-storeyed cottage, surrounded by rotten and dilapidated furniture for which no one would have given a five-pound note. For a score of years, it is said, he had worn the same suit, patched and repatched, until nothing remained of the original cloth. In the depth of winter he would sit in the darkness before an empty grate, grudging a few pence for light and fuel ; and, to save a few coppers, his housekeeper officiated as his hair-cutter—at a time when his income could not have been less than a thousand pounds a day. For twenty-seven years, until death came to release him, M. Colasson, one of the wealthiest men in France, never once set foot outside the door of his splendid mansion in the Rue Galilee ; nor did anyone but the old servant who ministered to his simple wants ever enter it. Until the year 1874 M. Colasson was one of the most brilliant, figures in Paris society, famed for his prodigal hand and his regal entertainments. Then in swift tragedy came the death of his nephew, who was dearer to him than life itself, and from that day,the millionaire said goodbye to the world, shut himself up with his grief in two rooms of his palace, and patiently awaited the end which was so long in coming. LIVED IN A TOMB.

A stranger hermitage was that to which Mr. Jonathan Reid, the American millionaire, repaired after the death of the wife he loved so well. He built a magnificent mausoleum of marble, and bronze, had her body placed in it, surrounded by her personal treasures—such as a stuffed parrot which had been her favourite pet, and the fancy needlework which her hand had last wrought—and, among these mementoes of a happy past, he spent the remaining years of his life. —“Answers,”