The 'Bonanza King.'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 37, 11 September 1902, Page 15

The 'Bonanza King.'

A. rnw days »go (lays the San Francisoo Monitor) Mr Mackay wm a gigantic figure in the world of finance and in those activities representing material progress in many cities and on two continents. To-day he ii but a memory. With the rush of weeks and months his name will pass from the minds of all save those who had been immediately associated with him in business or socially or who were the beneficiaries of his open-handed generosity. Such is human greatness. His memory is destined to remain green at t among the number who have reason to hold it in grateful benediction. Mr Mackay valued riches at least as much for the benefits they enabled their possessor to bestow upon worthy objects of his bounty, as for anything else. That is saying a great deal for any multimillionaire in these days when current and post-mortem benevolence among their kind too often assumes the shape of ostentatious tributes to eelf love in brick and mortar monumsnts perpetrating ther name and fame as founders or benefactors. The ' Bonanza King ' has not enshrined his name in any huge soholastio pile or sought to hand it down to posterity by erecting with his millions any imposing institute of culture or philanthropy. Bat he never turned a deaf ear to the cry of distress. His benefactions were many and were distributed with a sole view to the direct good accruing to the recipients thereof. He kept for years a list of private pensioners whose only claim to his bounty was friendship's tie and loyalty to early associations. How large this list was and the annual tax upon his resources whioh it represented, can only be oonjeotured even by those whom he made his almoners There are many stories current now concerning this phase of Mr Mackay's generosity, but it is not likely the whole truth will ever be known to the general publio, bo careful was he to conceal even from his

own right hand the good deeds of his left. Mr Maokay is unocrely mourned by a large and far-soattered host of friends and admirer* who esteemed him for the sterling qualities of manhood that mad* his name in this State and wherever he was known, the ■ynonym of everything kindly and honorable.