ALL IS NOT GOLD.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2465, 28 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

ALL IS NOT GOLD.

A Loji'DON writer says j—A sham heiress, with no less (she affirmed) than £2,000,000, has been swindling a good many people iu a district of England where money is termed '■ brass" (she really had lots of brass, and perhaps oxcused herself on that account.) She gave magnificent presents out of the sums Mhe got lent to her—procured on the ground that them was a temporary difficulty in realising , her capital. Never has the woi'Hhip of gold—though in this case it was but a paper currency—been illustrated more happily, or tho proverb that "the rich make many friend?.." Ijoqauso it was Ujat she wanted for n,o,th,insr, people could not do enough for her. She was neither young, beautiful, accomplished, nor (aa it would seem) deeply religious, but she at once became the i:lol of the neighbourhood. I can't aay lam very sorry for them. "Never borrow money of a poor man," eays the old saying, but one might surely add, "nor lend money to a rich one." It doesn't always return a hundredfold as one had expected. I remember au honest old farmer in Wiltshire, who,, before the present evil days bofel the agricultural interest, found himself very muoh out at elbows. He bad still a great deal more credit than he deserved, and indeed from the poor way in whiuh (from necessity) he lived was accounted wealthy. Suddenly he resolved to change his tactics. Honesty, he had heard, of course, was the best policy, but it might not be so ; at all events he would liive the thing a fair trial. He wsi« npijrly >0 years of age, whjch, guye l,im n gre it advantage in the scheme he had devi-ed, which was to urike great friends with his well-to-do neighbours, and very confidentially (for if it j were known, he said, others would naturally resent it) to leave each of them all ho had iu the world. For the next five years he lived at their expense ft was never grudged hjtn} ljl(e a flghtiryy cook. Neyer l\i\(\ thflfc old gentleman so gpfld a, fime. He. was. b.u^ed' with ' great pomp, anc| ceremony by the last legatee, c.airje in for all his debts and, a gqod deal o,f ridicule. Of court-", dis- ; agreeable things were' sf,id of ' the de- : coa-sed, lie didn't hoar them, and nobody could say he robbed the poor. ]