OWNS £60,000,000.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 July 1921, Page 9

OWNS £60,000,000.

ROMANTIC UPBRINGING. The richest boy in America has just become of age and entered into possession of his vast fortune. This golden youth is John Nicholas Brown, now an undergraduate at Harvard University. He is the heir of the -Browns, of Providence, Rhode Island, and the last bearer of that popular name in the family. j The;'fortune of his grandfather, John Carter Brown, textile king md founder of Brown University—amounted to more than £6,000,000 when he died in 1874. It has been calculated that the fortune, if allowed to accumulate since the date mentioned at the moderate annual rate of interest of 5 per cent, and compounded semi-annually amounts to-day to something like £6(),000,000. Jphn Nicholas, who was a very delicate baby, has from the hour of his birth been guarded with extraordinary care and enormous expense from anything which might jeopardise his health or safety.

Four New York specialists, to cite onlyone illustration, were rushed by special train to attend him at his home in fashionable Newport during one fancied crisis. An eminent physician was always in attendance.

For a considerable period he was ordered to drink one quart, of pure cream daily, and his private pedigree cow was pastured on a £25,000 piece of land in the heart of Newport’s exclusive colony. The boy was guarded by a dozen detectives night and day lost he be hurt or kidnapped. His special playground was fenced with barbed wire and his attendants watched him carefully while he played. Detectives accompanied him to his church.

His specially-built palace, overlooking the water of Narragansett Bay, was a wonderland. No on? was permitted to breathe air in the night nursery at the same time as John lest dangerous germs enter the apartment.

An alcove in the wall of his playroom could, be transformed at any moment into either a,' miniature theatre or a little “zoo,” with moveable scenery, marionettes, animals, magic lantern slides, and cinema screen all complete.

A fine motor-launch was moored to a dock in the grounds of the golden youth’s palace, and a roller-skating rink, with a beautiful smooth concrete floor, and a miniature mechanical band to furnish music was another of the lad’s costly toys.

John Nicholas -went to England with his mother and attendants in 1897, returning home the following year. He is described as of pleasing appearance, with light hair and bine eyes.

What sort of a man will he prove? How will he use his millions? To help poor old humanity along?

Whom will he marrw? But perhaps theyfuim’ber of “caps” that have been sew for him will turn him, as many amflher millionaire, into the proverbial ‘’crusty old bachelor.” Time alone can answer these and other questions.