Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-02-25
The Millionaire Dinner.

Draped In Inverness and correctly crown
ed with crush hat, he went out to a solemn
dinner where pretty girl opposite tried
vainly to rally his gloomy spirits. Gloom
lily he ate his way through the dinner Now
and then he consented to crack a few
gloomy jokes, which were received with
well-bred gloomy laughter Then the party
went to a problem play that most of them
didn't enjoy, but to which they went a
matter of duty, because it was well known
that the play would be the leading subject
of conversation during the coming week.
AT the supper party afterward Mr.. Smith
and hsi friends came nearer to having real
fun than had been his lot during any other
part of the day. The ladies We're clever
and handsome, the supper was good, and
MIR. Smith became almost gay.
half-past one O'Clock in the morning he
dropped into club for a nightcap, and
o'clock found him in bed, having completed
his hard days work with perfect success.
Sometimes he varied his days routine by
spinning through the suburbs in his auto
car; now and then he rode to hounds bit;
once or twice during the season he made
up coaching party; occasionally he even
gave little entertainments in his apart
ments But the latter enterprise demanded
too much thought, and he evaded it
much as possible.
Now and then he INDUCED in the wilder
pleasures of life-the kind that may be en-
joyed by quite common persons who are
willing to take their chances of a headache
next morning. But he really could not en-
joy those things as much the general
world for his millions didn't help him a bit
in getting drunk any differently from
others or enjoying it more, and they did
serve to get his name into the papers on an
occasion that made him shudder ever after.
Thus this quiet Smith passed three years
as a perfectly successful idler; then one
day he was warned that his man of affairs
was a scamp.
Spoith had n hpritpd the of
his Smith ancestors, but not their quickness
at figures. After few days spent down
town." during which time the noise and
dirt got on his nerves to an appalling eX-
tent, he was so mudded that he couldnt
tell as much about his affairs as he had
known when he started. Experts and law
yers were called in, and they relieved him
of the greater part of his worry by taking
away the source of it,
He Has Fun at Last.
Smith is out of society now. He does not
promenade the avenue any more, for his
capital was so small when his rescuers got
through with it that he has to do little
work to make it go around. He is in part
nership in a small way with a broker down
town. and though he doesn't do much, he
feels the grave Importance of his position
and is at the office ahead of everybody else
every day.
MY SOUL" he said to the writer the
other day. I'm having fun now, and that
more than l ever had then"
The typical millionaires whose names
come at once to all who think of idle men
of wealth are not really idlers at all Some
of them cannot even be classed as men Of
leisure.
Though they are not men who make the
investing and re-investing of their wealth
a business as the VanderbiltS and Goulds
do, they are kept busy enough watching
their capital. Such families as the Rhine
landers and the Astors have enough real
estate property on their hands in the city
of New York to make a big village; and
though they are able to, and do, pay great
salaries to clever managers, there are hun
dreds of things in the management of real
estate that demand the personal action OF
the owner. Titles and mortgages cannot
pass without the signature of the princi-
pals.
The constant accumulation of income re-
uures a constant investment, and 1t is nat
ural that the owner of the money should
have something to say about it. Now,
man can't expect to invest money safely
in New York without knowing great deal