A BEGGAR-MILLIONAIRE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5632, 18 April 1879, Page 3

A BEGGAR-MILLIONAIRE.

A “ beggar-millionaire,” according to the Burger Zeitung of- Berlin, has just died in Berlin. The old fellow left property amounting to more than a million and a half , marks. He had a numerous family, children ‘ and grandchildren, and lived in splendid style in Berlin, -giving sumptuous entertainments, at which the champagne'is said ; to have run ih streams. The soirees were/ only attended by middle-class society, and were held only during the winter. In summer the jovial old gentleman invariably left his house for four or five months. . It is now known that he has regularly frequented, at least until a few years ago, the principal bathing places in Germany, and that he gathered his immense plunder [by begging. In wretched dress, with aui invalid's cap, blue spectacles, long snow-white hair, and apparently palsied limbs,-he used to shamble slowly along the promenades. He never directly asked for anything, but used to receive voluu-. tary offerings from the visitors, and these amounted to a large sum, which ’ was- regularly despatched to Berlin every week... His biggest harvests were collected in the great gambling • towns, ■ when those places in the full bloom of their -hideous prosperity. He.got the report well spread abroadtthat ha bad formerly been ■ very rich,’ ’ but had lost everything 1 at tfietgamwg table/ Ho would

pace to and fro in and around the great building at Baden Baden, and mere than once during the day some player v.'ho had made a lucky stroke of business wou’d sympathetically press a piece of gold upon the old man's acceptance. He is said by the Burger Zeltung to have driven this profitable trade for thirty seasons, and to have o-.ved the great part of his well-invested fortune to this cnrions mania, for it became in time a mania, since he continued it long after he had become a man of unusual wealth. His last appearance was in Wiesbaden. One day, as he stood on the promenade with a woe-begone aspect, and trembling with feigned illness, a Berliner called him aside, and informed him that he recognised him. That evening the old man took his ticket at the railway station, and steamed home to Berlin. He never appeared again in his character of beggar.