The herald., 1897-10-17
SUNDAY, OCTOBER II. 1897.
WEALTH, LONELINESS, SUICIDE

In the Contemporary Review august
Harry Raymond writes a graphic anG
picturesque character sketch of the late
multi ti-millionaire Of South Africa, B.
Barnato. After describing the peculiar
manner Of the man as stock exchange
manipulation and as bold and reckless
but painstaking and wide-awake busi-
ness man, who trusted nothing to others
and who won his millions not by luck
or chance, but by the keenest persona
attention, power of concentration ani
marvellous grasp of detail. Mr. Raymond
shows wherein Barnatos philosophy
failed in securing him happine ss-tha!
greater boon than wealth. Mr.. Raymond
says:
He never met a man without per-
forming a mental analysis of his abili-
ties, as to how he might be utilized
for the advancement of Barnato Broth
ers, and never forgot face or any
thing else he desired to remember. But
in all this, in his office hours and the
extra office hours of various reputed
to his work-himself the gayest of
every party, the genial companion, the
witty host, he lived a life of appall-
ing solitude and loneliness AS in his
scheme of life every man was posi-
BILE contributor to his profits, so all
who approached him did so for the fur
therance of their own interests only.
That anyone should ever desire his
friendship or be interested in his per-
sonality as a man was to him inexplica-
Bile, and therefore incredible. To him
all mankind were at once chessmen for
his game Of life and leeches who would
puck what they could from him and
hang wherever possible. Had he lived
longer, this awful frozen solitude Of
the heart would have melted away and
the thaw had already commenced with
the first clinging finger-touches of the
two children, by whom the later years
of his married life had been bright
ened. His nephews, too-his sisters
sons, Wolfe and S. B. Joel-had been
carefully trained and introduced into
his business for their relationship alone:
but they had manifested such great
ability and were so evidently attached
to him personally, that their influence
would have aided that of wife and chill
dren in accelerating the thaw. But it
was not to be, and by reason of his
awful loneliness and lack of humanity,
B. l. Barnato missed greatness and is
no more. Dead, and by his own hand;
for the handspring of that human ma
chine, never relaxed, snapped. He who
A Of baI : h
feet. and might have been numbered
among its great ones, ended his career
mere financier and nothing more.
After all, is not this, or something like
to this, the fate of all men who devote
their lives to the accumulate of grea
wealth? Do they not invariably, miss
the road to domestic happiness
THAT only bliss of paradise
That has survived the fall'
And go down to the grave distrusting ali
beloved or honored by few? "Give me ;
Gays the psalmist, neither poverty no
riches, but food convenient for me-" L
is not out of the ranks of men, not drunl
with the wine of wealth, that have issuet
the great ones of the earth? Appropri
ately was the god set up in the wilder
ness, by the recalcitrant Ishmaelites
made of gold and in the similitude of
calf. 1t may perhaps be said, and with
out extravaganza, that the mammoth
curse, socially and commercially, of ou
day and generation, is the inordinate lus
of gold. The sooner our sons of light
purge themselves of this all-peryadin,
vice. or bring It within reasonabl
bounds the easier can they win tha
without which the greatest wealth is a
poor as winter Barnato was not tn
nrst millionaire who found by bitter ex