The age-herald., 1897-12-16
BARNEY BARNAT0'S LIFE.
All London Reading of the Career of the Once
 Diamond King.

London, Dec. 15--Other books moment arily sink into insignifcance. The life of Tennyson is not having half the sale What is there in Tennyson which may suggest how to make money? Everybody is reading the biography of Barney Barnato, who committed suicide not long ago by Jumping overheard from Cape liner, with as much avidity as if the secret of making millions were to be found between the books cov- CTS.
 The author of the book is Harry Ray mond a newspaper man. Raymond saw great deal of Barney at the Cape. One day he said, jokingly, to the Diamond King:
 Barney, Pm going to write your life when you are dead, and Pm going to write you just as you are.'
 ''Then you'll make me a good fellow, was the response of the pasty-faced little millionaire, as he rolled a big cigar in his mouth But you'll die long before I do. I'm going to live to be hundred.'
 Only a few years later Barney took his own life in a manner worthy of him. leav- ing some twenty-five millions which he had so spectacularly accumulated, behind him. The book does make Barney pretty good fellow of his kind; but that does not say that are not better kinds. Raymond tells the old story of how Barney went to South Africa as clown and a conjurer. As conjurer Barney was a rank failure, and not enough of a success as a clown to
 
 leaving the show business in those exciting times in Kimberley just after the great diamond finds had been made, to clever showmen, and began seeking diamonds in the refuse from the mines, then carelessly handled. Before long he had become a small diamond trader.
 So far as Raymon1can make out, he owed his successes at money making to his peculiar untutored precedence. He had a gift of foresight which enabled him to find fortt1r in fha nl1 1c ur1,t1 atl similarly situated, had forsaken as worth less. At the diamond diggings of Kimber- ley other men had trusted to the opinions scientific experts. Barney Barnato trusted only to his own instincts, and his instincts were true, while the opinions of better edu- cated men were entirely in error.
 In 1876 it was believed at Kimberley that the diamondferous yellow ground lying above the volcanic blue rock contained the final possibilities of wealth. Barnato's for tune lay in his persistent belief that a richer deposit of diamonds would be found deeper down, under the blue stratum. He had no scientific reason for his belief, which was contrary to the accepted opin- ion of practical geologists. But with care full and excellent judgment, he bought up many claims which were supposed to have given out, and he he'd them with the de- termination to go on until his purchase should either make or break him. He speedily found that the despised blue rock
  and that. as he had anticipated, it yielded more and laregr stones than all the yellow surface ground contained. He added oper- ation to operation, foated his companies, and by capable management acquired such far-reaching interests as effectually to con trol the diamond output of the whole world.
 Barney's other strong characteristics were his unwearying energy, his super stitions. his generosity, his love for his wife and his children, of horse racing box ing and acting and of whisky and sodas, of which he consumed something like a score a day. He had not the slightest taste for art or for fine literature In this respect the extent of his knowledge was bounded by the pictures in humorous weeklies of lower grade.
 His real name was Isaacs, Barnato hav- ing been assumed for stage purposes when he entered upon his career as a clown. Mir Raymond tells us this and other se- crets; and, therefore, it Is needless to say that the book was not authorized by his