FORTUNES REFUSED.

Waipa Post, Volume VII, Issue 331, 17 July 1914, Page 5

FORTUNES REFUSED.

It is said that when it became known that the letters of the great Irish leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, were to be published, offers to purchase them were received from all over the world, and that one great nowspaper proprietor in the United States sent Mrs. Parnell an open cheque, upon which she might inscribe her own price. The offer was refused.

Robert Browning constantly refused to write for the magazines and reviews. He only departed from self-denying ordinance on one occasion, and that was in aid of charity. In his later days, when Biowning societies were springing up all over Britain and America, fabulous prices were offered to him even for a short poem. He put all these tempting offers aside, and “stuck to his text” to his dying day. But this determination to refuse money when it is offered is evidently not tlie attribute of the well-to-do only, for a labourer in Pennsylvania has just refused two fortunes amounting to £20,000, which actually awaits him in Wales. It seems that when Mr. Enoch E. T. Evans, was a boy his father refused to allow him to learn dancing, and generally brought him up very strictly. When he was able to shift for himself he left home, that lie might kick a free lo<|, and, cutting himself off from his Welsh relations, has become an American citizen and arrived at the age of fifty-two. Nevertheless, Mr. Evans is the only heir to £IO,OOO left by his father and a similar amount left by an uncle.' He declines to touch the money, saying that be can leave it in Wales for bis children when they are grown up and he is dead. He is determined to support himself and his seven children on his earnings as a common labourer, lie says, “If 1 have lien all these years without the money, 1 can get along the rest of my days without it.”

That great painter, GeorgaJj’i'cderick, Watts, made tip his mind pretty eyffi in his career an a painter to potocnis best pictures for love only, naTat his death to bequeath them tnirffo nation. It is more than probabhjrChat if the pictures of that distinguished artist which are hung in/flio Tate Gallery, were to ho at auction at Christie’s thojiTawould fetch .at least £150,000, ayT it is not improbable that they "pOiiWietch niorp. Even when they were painted picluro collectors beseis#fl the famous artist, entreating him to part with his splendid canvases, fie was adamant, however. He made

his living by printing portraits, but his imaginative pictures ho would not part with at any price. The immortal Turner was. just as bad Wealthy men beseiged him with cheques which ho would not take, and his studio was littered with hundreds of paint rigs and water-colour sketches, all of which lie might have sold fifty times over hod ho so desired. It is said of him that he appeared on a cold, miserable morning in an inn yard when the coach was about to start in which two of Iris friends were to travel. r lhoy wore amazed and gratified to soo him, although their pleasure, was somewhat spoiled when they found that lie had come to demand the repayment of twopence which he had lent one of them the week before. Yet lie refused at least £200,000 in his lifetime, left .Cl-lO.OOo'to provide a fund for the support of poor artists, and bis matchless pictures to the National Gallery!