MEN WHO REFUSE MILLIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 April 1921, Page 9

MEN WHO REFUSE MILLIONS.

WEALTHY PEOPLE WHO PREFER POVERTY TO RICHES. “I did nothing to earn this fortune, and I was not given an opportunity to decide whether I needed it. It is more than a man wants. One man is only entitled to more than another if he needs more.” With these words Mr. Charles Garland has just turned a resolute back on the quarter of a million pounds left to him by his late father, a rich Boston financier. He 1 declares that he prefers his simple life on a small farm to the luxury such unearned riches would give him. BAKES HIS OWN BREAD. And he is only one of many men who have similarly scorned the gold which wealthy fathers have accumulated for them. For many years Air. John Vanderbilt, a member of oqe of the world’s richest families, has made his home in a small cottage on the summit -of the Witch’s Head Mountain, in Pennsylvania. Here this millionaire hermit leads his lonely life, doing his own cooking and housework. washing his linen in a mountain stream, cultivating his vegetables, making his own bread, replenishing his larder with the spoil of his gun and rod. On a small, rocky island off the Connecticut coast lives in equal isolation and penury Charles Alvord, son of an American millionaire, who, thirty years ago, turned his back on society to lead the simple life in close communion with Nature. His home is a tiny cabin built by his own hands. He pay* the Government a yearly rent of a sovereign, and spends his days happ'ly in reading and fishing. “No one comes to see me, he says, “and Igo nowhere. I am always alone. I am cut off from tho world as on the planet Mars; but I have found happiness. I am content to watch the battle from afar; for riches, honors, social triumphs, and all for which men are willing to lay down their lives, are nothing to me now.” A few years ago Al. Solodovnikoff, a Russian multi-millionaire, ended his days in a cottage, surrounded by dilapidated and rotting furniture. Although he was reputed to be one of the richest men in Europe, his wealth gave him no pleasure. ‘•Aly gold,” he once said bitterly, “has brought me nothing but misery, and I hate it.”

When Al. Solodovnikoff was shivering in his fireless hovel, »> well known English baronet, with a rent-roll' of £30,000 a year, was leading <n equally sordid and wretched life in a London garret overlooking the Thames, while two of the most beautiful ancestral homes in England were waiting vainly for the coming of their lord.

He never crossed the threshold of his hermitage, and found his chief pleasure in papering his walls over and over again with pictures cut from the various 'illustrated papers. Fifty years ago there was a no more enviable figure in France than Al. Paul Cola4son, the Parisian millionaire, whose regal entertainments were the talk and Xvonder of Europe. Then fell the tragic blow which laid his life in ruins. One lay in 1874 his nephew, to whom he was passionately devoted, was burnt to death at a fancydress ball; and from that day AL Colasson was dead to the world, with grief as his only companion. “Aly money was all for him,” he said, in the bitterness of his soul. “Now that he has been taken from me I have no use for it.”

For twenty-seven years--to the day of his death—he shut himself in a room of his gorgeous palace in Rue Galilee, living exclusively on eggs and bread, supplied to him by an old servant, ,the only human being he ever allowed to approach him.