RICH, BUT WRETCHED.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 191, 12 February 1887, Page 4

RICH, BUT WRETCHED.

For years a weazened little man with long, unkempt hair earned a living peddling eggs in the lower part of the city. He always wore a ragged suit of clothes, and many persons bought of him because they thought he was very p^or. The old man's name was William Eger. and he lived in a wrotchedly famished attic at 53, Hudsonsheet, which ho hired four years ago for 5i30l u month, irom Henry Bernstein. He -eldum spoke to the landlord and always paid his rent on the day it fell due. His neighbours pitied him, but the old man " would not accept the charity which they offered him. He always rotircd at 7 o'clock, and was up aaain afc daybreak attending to his business. No one saw him leave the house on Friday and nothing was «een of htm until to-day, when, thinking that perhaps some accident had befallen hi" lodger. -Mr Bernstein broke iv the door. On the fioor by the window w«q the old man, de;*d. A heavy table made of two caw-bucks and a piue board lay on top of him, and the only chair ia the place and the kerosene lamp were overturned. Blood oezed from the old man's mouth and nose, but there wove no evidences of violence visible. Mr Bernstein sent for the police, and Coroner Eldmao, after viewing the remains, examined the dead man's effects. The only furniture in the room was a rickfety bed, held together by ropes, but supplied with a soft; feafcher mfJittreee, and a bureau in the lost stages of decftv, and a chair. In a pair of well-worn shoes that were under the bed the coroner found $39 in gold, and in the pockets of the threadbare trousers, which the old man wore, he fished out $9 in silver and $06 in bills. When the Coroner pulled out the bureau drawer the whole affair tumbled togother and a newly rolled package fell to the floor. On opening it eighteen $100 coupon bonds of the issue of 1877, bearing 4 per cent, interest, were discovered. The coupons to July Ist bad been carefully cut off, showing that the owner had collected his interest. Besides this a bank book on the Bowery Bank representing deposits amounting to $555.03, and another on the Bleecker-street Bank, in which the old man had §546.49, were unearthed from under a pile of soiled linen in the lower drawer. From ft corner that would be likely to afford a safe hiding place a $100 share of Union Pacific preferred stock, a dividend certificate for $55 77 issued by the same company, and a few dollars were jrathered up. In all about §4,000 was found. Among the papers which the eld man had about him was a will signed but not witnessed by anybody, written in the most sarcastic German, showing that the writer was a roan of kee-n wit and considerable education. He desired all his money to go to the Gorman Legal Aid Society, and gave hi* personal pffects, worth nothing, to ♦•the one who hap last had care of me." Coroner Eld man sent for ex Governor Edward Salomon, the counsel for the Society, and gave him all the old man's effects. From other papers a complete history of the old man wap obtained He was born in Albertshofen, Bavaria, in 1820 ; was a baker by trade, and travelled over Germany. He came to this country in 1861, and spent several years in Mexico, as passports from the Mexioan police Bhow. " Ho also had papers from the Texas courts, dated Brownßville, 1864, and was naturalised in 1871. Be had bad no friends as far as it is known, and it is likely that his property will go into the hands of the Public Administrator.