The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1876-05-11

" ECONOMY AND THRIFT. .
How a lMiser Acquired Fortune
and Returned to Fatherland.
SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS SAVED IN
TWENTY THREE YEARS.

Twenty-Five years ago poor German
emigrant named August SaIpius came
over the sea to seek better fortune in the
Western States of America. He was
then SS years of age, unmarried, and ig-
norant of any language except that OF MS
mother-country. By chance rather than
nreference he made Columbus his home,
easily finding employment in drug
store as he was soon found to be first
class apothecary. He was dry, odd
and uncompanionable kind ofa man, but
won the respect of his employers by his
sobriety and attention to business After
having clerked two years at Columbus
he seems to have found himself sutfi'
ciently wealthy to come to Cincinnati for
the purpose of establishing a drug store
ofbis own. With his hard savings-the
result of ascetically rigid economy,-he
succeeded in opening a retail drug Dusl-
ness at No. 440 Walnut street. -,
He rented the first floor Of the build
inc which comprised two rooms-the
store, only fifteen by fifteen feet, ana
back room twelve by twelve feet lie
converted the back room into sleeping
apartment barred up the windows ana
tbe back door, and rendered the little
chamber as gloomy and darksome as pos
sible. Here he slept and ate, year after
wear. without light, comfort or yentlla-
fion. His breakfast and supper consisted
of weak coffee, heated upon one OF those
little hermaphrodite stoves which poor
family NAV use either for cooking or
heating purposes. For dinner, in the
years before the war, he always Went 10
Gentschs beer saloon, on Vine street,
near Twelfth, where he could get a beef
steak for ten cents and glass of beer for
fhree cents, This was his noon-day meal
for wears and years, and he was never
known to purchase two glasses OF beer at
meal time, or to disburse more than thlr-
teen cents for dinner before the war.
In later wears he changed his dining
place to a German boarding house on
Court street, where he could obtain q
meal for twenty-five cents. But he eyi-
IDENTITY considered this too much money
to spend at one timein the satisfaction OF
hunger, as he continually grun'bled at
the cost of his food. For twenty-three
years he lived thus, always sleeping, IN
the same small, noisesome room, eating
The same coarse food, and maintaining
the same strict rules with regard to busl-
ness hours. The store was always opened
early in the morning, and always closed
late st night. During those long years
the old man had no companions no
friends, no confdants. Occasionally when
business was brisk, or when he felt serl-
ously i'll, or when it was necessary for
him to leave his haunt in order to re-
plenish the stock, he would employ
boy about eleven or twelve years old to
attend to the store for nominal salary.
But he would never keep boys for any
length of time, discharging them with
harsh wolds and without cause, simply
in order to save the expense OF their
pitiful salaries. He would never trust
customers, never lend money, and never
spend cent for his own pleasure or that
of others. Neither WAS he ever known
to PIT money out at interest. AT last he
came to be regarded as a typical miser,
devoid of the common passions OF human
beings, and absorbed only in the solitary
passion of accumulating wealth. How
much money the old man had saved, or
how he saved it, no one of his neighbors
pretended to know Probably nobody
except himself knew. But had the faint !
est rumor gained circulation regarding
the riches accumulated in that hideous
little back room, the old mans life would |
not have been very safe. Folks always |
thought him too cautious to keep any
large quantity of money about his prem
ises, and the old man was perfectly well
aware that they thought SO, So he piled |
up his money amid pale dust and black
spider webs and old broken medicine |
bottles, feeling assured that no human
being knew anything about it; eating
stale bread and drinking weak coffee, dis
charging his unfortunate boys, and grad
ually growing gray as the gray dust upon
his bed.roo floor in which the feet of
gloom-loving insects left elfn-shaped |
tracks.
But last summer the old man began
for the first time in quarter of cen
tury to gossip little about his own at.
fairs. He told people that he thought he
would sell out his business and visit the
old country. Perhaps some lonely night
the lonely man had, after twenty-five
years, for the first time peered in some
ancient looking-glass hanging in that
dreary back den, to find himself hoary
with the hoaryness of twenty-three win
ters, and weird with the weirdness Of
solitude. Perhaps he desired, like many
a self.eXiled one, that his bones should
lie under the shadow of some solemn
spire near the place of his birth. He had
also become weak and broken down in
health; his lower limbs had become like
those of the ancient asCetics, fearfully |
affected with ulcers, by reason of his in
activity and wretched living; and he evil
dently felt that to continue much longer
in his business would hasten death rap
idly. Nevertheless, he fingered still in
the old drug store for months, until it be-
came difficult for him to move his band
aged legs. At last he visited prominent
wholesale druggist, with whom he had
carried on business for many years, and
requested him to find a purchaser for
the drug store at 81 800.
A purchaser was found last October,
not at ST 800, but at 81, 200, and August
Salpius was satisfied with the bargain.
After the necessary arrangements in re-
gard to the transfer had been made, he
then requested his druggist frient to find
out for him what silver coin was worth.
1t was then worth los and 108. On be-
ing asked how much silver coin he had,
the old man said he did not really know
himself, bat he supposed he had between
$1,000 and $4,000, mostly in filty-cent
pieces. He was asked to go home and
count them, and he was occupied in
counting for more than two days. On
returning to his friend he remarked that
he hated to part so soon with his money,
but that the Office safe was not big enough |
to hold it all The silver had been lying
idle in his bed room since 1859; he had |
not time, he averred, to lose in putting it |
out at interest. His friend succeeded in |
selling the coin for him at l06, and as it
Uaiuhad naorlv four hundrpd nnundl q |