THE GIFT HUNTERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 24 August 1907, Page 3

THE GIFT HUNTERS.

TROUBLES 01' A MEELIONAIRESS. Amazing disclosures are made by Miss Helen Gould of the extent to which American ~ millionaires are persecuted by the attentions of people whom she euphemistically describes as "gift-hunters." Miss Gould is merely a Liliputian heiress, and her sufferings at the hands of begging-letter writers are insignificant compared with those of Mrs R. Sage, Mi' Carnegie, Mr Rockefeller, and others, who have been forced in self-protection to organise speciul staffs of abb philanthropists charged with the duty of superintending the business of giving away money. Yet Miss Gould, if she were to satisfy all the requests that reach her, would require a yearly income of £25,000,000. Her correspondents average three hundred weekly. Tliey ask her for everything under the sun, from false teetli, bicycles, and bridal trousseaux to houses and land. According to an amusing tabulated statement site has issued, eleven persons within seven days petitioned her for pianos and for gold watches. Others desired sewing machines, and several young ladies thought that Miss Gould would like to furnish their bridal clothes, hinting that a dowry would be most acceptable. A model son wrote in a pious strain requesting £IOOO to erect' a monument In his deceased father, but; the most ambitious was a man who needed £200.000 to found a colony in Cuba. Miss Gould explains that it would require £400,000 to satisfy the petitions for a single week, even if she ignored the suggestions of those who say that they liave named their daughters alter her.