The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1905-08-19
WHO rs THE RICHEST MAN?

The newspapers are fond of cal
culating wealth and telling us of the
rich men of the world. The six big
gest capitalists of the United States,
these chroniclers inform us, possess
together nearly billion and half of
dollars. Rockefeller is supposed to
have $500, 600, 900, Andrew Carnegie
$3.50, 900, 900 and William Waldorf
Astor some $500, 600, 900; others are
recorded with 500, 600, 900 and mere
millionaires are now so numerous
that they are no longer deemed
worthy of counting. Wealth, how
ever, is only comparative term and
it is questionable whether the really
rich men are enumerated in this some
what pompous list. The rich man is
he who has exactly what he wants
and possesses the capacity for enjoy
ing it all to the full.
John Burroughs and Jay Gould, as
boys, went to school together, then
afterwards their paths diverged as
widely as if they inhabited different
planets. Gould was instinctively a
money-maker and commencing life
selling patent rat trap, wound up
as the owner of vast railway systems.
Shattered by the contests of Wall
Street, worn out by the fever of plan
ming and scheming, he has long since
departed from the earth and its end
less struggles. John Burroughs cared
nothing for money. He loved out
doors and found his greatest delight
in studying bird life. He has spent
fifty years following after crows and
other feathered creatures, watching
their habits, learning their calls, in
specting their nest building and noting
all the peculiarities of their being.
By writing entertainingly of these in
books and magazines he obtained
enough money to supply his simple
wants, besides gaining fame as nat
uralist and many warm friends and
admirers. Heit was, of all the eighty
million people in this country, that
President Roosevelt took with him
into Yellowstone Park for a two
weeks sojourn in companionship with
nature. He was invited as the most
entertaining and instructive of COM
panions, the most lovable of men and
the best example of what comes from
plain living and high thinking. Who
was the richest man, Jay Gould, with
his millions of sordid dollars, or John
Burroughs in his bark-covered cabin
on the Hudson?
Audubon accumulated but little of
this worlds goods, but ne saw the
wild turkey in its native haunts, the
wild pigeons flying in countless mil
lions, the mocking bird unfrightened
by the approach of civilization and all
the others so delightfully."- described in
"The Birds of North America He
spent his life in the wilderness, along
the rushing rivers, by roaring Mag
ara, in the hills and dales made musi-
cal by the thousands of songsters
which knew not grief or care. Which
was the richest man, Audubon or
Rockefeller. and which has made the
world richer by living? Thoreau at
Walden Pond found companionship
with the fishes and the water fowl,
while Maurice Thompson, kindred
spirit, roamed the Georgia woods for
that nature study which gave US his
graphic account of "a Redhead Fam
ily." Though wealth missed these
men and others like them, they were
rich in all that ennobles life and con-
fers real enjoyment of its beauties
and its blessings. Every farmer is
in daily touch with those things which
afford the most genuine enjoyment
and he need not envy millionaires
who, with all their money, cannot buy
what is in reach of every denizen of
the untry.-Amer1cam Farmer.