Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1858-07-08
Tbt Storp-Geller*
THE DYING MISER.
BY GEORGE tIpPARD.

They brought him dollar. He took 1t
and clutched it in his long skinny fingers,
tried its sound against the bedpost and then
gazed on it long and intensely with his dull,
leaden eye.
That day in the hurry Of business, Death
had struck him. He was hurryipg to collect
the last months rent, and was on the verge
of some miserable court, where his tenants
herded like beasts in their kennels; he was
there with his hand book in his hand, when
Death laid his hand upon him.
He was carried home to his splendid man
sion. He was laid out upon bed with a
satin coverlet. The lawyer, the relations
and the preacher were sent for. All day
long be lay without speech, moving only his
right hand, as though in the act of counting
out money.
At midnight he spoke.
He asked for dollar, and they brought
one to him, and, lean and gaunt, he sat up
in his bed and clutched it with the grip of
death.
A shaded lamp stood on the table near the
silken bed. Its light fell family around the
splendid room, where chairs, and carpets,
and mirrors, silken bed and lofty ceiling, all
said Gold as plain as lips could say it.
His hair and eyebrows were white, his
cheeks sunken, and his lips thin and sur
rounded by wrinkles that indicate the pattern
Of avarice. As he sat up in bed with his
neck barred, and the silken coverlet wrapped
about his lean frame, his white hair and
eyes contrasted with his wasted and wrin.
kled face, he looked like ghost. And his
life was centered there, in the dollar which
he gripped in his clenched fist
His wife, pleasant faced, matronly wo.
man, was seated at the foot of the bed His
son young man of twenty.one, dressed in
the last touch of fashion sat by the lawyer
The lawyer sat by the table, pen in hand and
gold spectacles on his nose. There was 8
huge parchment spread before him.
DO you think he'll make will asked
his son.
Hardly ooMpos MENTIs yet,' was the
whispered reply. 'Wait. He'll be LUCID
after while
my DEAR said the wife, 'had I not bet
ter send for the preacher2'
She rose and took her dying husband BY
the hand but he did not mind. His eye:
were upon the dollar.
He was rich man. He owned places il
Walnut and Chestnut streets, and novels ano
courts in the outskirts. He had iron mine:
in this State, copper mines on the lake some
where; he had golden interests in Califor.
MIA. His name was bright upon the record:
of twenty banks; he owned stock of al
kinds; he had half dozen papers in his
pay.
He knew but one virtue-to get money
That crime he had never forgotten, in the
long way of thirty-fve years.
To hunt down debtor, to distress ten
ant, to turn few additional thousands by {
sharp speculation; these were the main a
chievements of his life.
He was good man; his name was upor
the silver plate on the pew door of a velve
cushioned church.
He wasa benevolent man; for every thous
and which he wrung from the tenants Of hi'
courts, or from the debtors, who writhed be-
meath his heels, he gave ten dollars to some
benevolent institution.
He was just man; see him, as he sits up
on the bed of death, with the dollar in hi
clenched hand. a,..
s0h holy dollar! object Of his lifelong