A CURIOUS romance adds one more instructive fact to point the moral of a miser’s life, and of “the love of money.”  For many years past an old man might have been seen carrying an old bag on his shoulders, scraping up odds¹ and ends from the gutter², and garbage from the streets.  This man’s home was in a London suburb, a wretched room filled with rubbish—old pieces of iron and brass³, bits of string, &c.  Around the room were tin deed-boxes, which some of his friends half suspected must be possessed⁴ of properties of more or less value.  The wretched man lived on what he chanced to pick up by the way, or what was given to him by the charitable, who thought him to be a beggar.  He used to attend one of our metropolitan⁵ hospitals as an out-patient, receiving advice and medicine gratis⁶.  This man died in the midst of squalid wretchedness and apparent want.  His friends at once proceeded to ransack⁷ the place in search for his money; the deed-boxes proved to be “dummies,” containing only strings⁸ and tapes, and for some time the search proved fruitless.  At last, however, the old chair in which he used to sit was found to contain, in the worn-out cushion, a bundle of most valuable securities, amounting to £60,000, and a will.  This will, after leaving £100 each to his executors, devised all the residue⁹ of his property to two institutions—one moiety¹⁰ to the Royal Free Hospital, Gray’s-inn-road, in which institution he used to obtain advice and medicine gratis, as above; and the other half to the Royal National Lifeboat Association.  So that these two useful institutions will receive £30,000 each, and possibly more, as the result of this “miser’s” wealth!  Search is being made for further documents amid the heaps of rubbish that have been allowed to p. 133accumulate in the wretched man’s

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