Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1908-03-07
= $1,000. 4 4 - ! ! a. a. - = ! 10 :
unIuckg Paul
9y INarjorie r. gohnson.

Il
stockings, was not in love, and, best
of all, he thought, had not a cent In
the world and no head for business.
His ill-luck began when his great
uncle Morrison died and saddled the
burden of his millions upon him. He
had not expected this, and fumed and
fretted, yewing he would never bear
1t. He had just taken passage for
Europe in the steerage of a cattle
steamer sailing from Quebec, had had
hard time to raise the money for
even that, and now, in he very
height of his triumph at having ac-
complished the acme of his ambition,
down came that crushing inheritance,
and life lost its roseate hue and be-
came black.
Reluctantly he gave up thoughts
OF the steerage, and secured a deck
cabin on the Kaiser Wilhelm der
Crosse from New York, but all the
way over, while outwaruly enjoying
himself and making himself agree
able to the ladies, he was planning
how to get rid of his monetary incu-
bus.
In Paris he gave everybody the
Slip and went straight to the Latin
Quarter. There he took an attic,
fitted it up with secondhand furni-
ture, had a mean pallet" for bed.
tumbledown easel, some scarecrow
chairs and other shabby things, AM
then settled d ,wn to work with
strong hope of some degree of hap
piness. He asked the boys about the
cheapest restaurants and was soon
going 1t with the most poverty
stricken of the lot having a good
time and almost succeeding in for
getting his money y hen one unlucky
day. his lawyer lacked him out, and
secrecy was no |, niger possible. His
comrades Of the Quarter distrusted
him after that and turned the cold
shoulder, al there was nothing to
do but quit Paris.
In Munich, whittier he went, he
didn't go it quite 50 strong, taking
a fairly decent APARTMENT, working
or not as he ikeo spending and los
Ing all the money he could without
arousing suspicion. Working as he
did, by fits and starts, it required no
management to acquire a reputation
for laziness, and he soon had the hap
piness OF learning that he was spoken
of as ne endowed who would
never make his mark. This encoul-
aged him to believe that he could
safely exhibit with good prospect
of being skied, and finding no sale
for his work. What. then, was his
dismay on going into the Gallery to
see his picture hung on the line, with
an admiring crowd before 1t, and to
receive the next day an offer of sig
teen thousand marks for It. He had
to accept, of course, or be found out
but it convinced him that Munich
was, for his purposes, worse than
Paris
Next he tried ST. Petersburg, think
ing that II there were such thing
as getting into scrape, Russia was
the country for the purpose. Here
he did all the reckless things he
could think OF, any one of which
would have resulted in the Danish
ment to Siberia of an ordinarily lucky
individual, but he never succeeded in
exciting even faint suspicion of Nj
hilism. Before he had been in the
city month he found himself being
sought out by personages in the
court circle and treated as II he had
been a prince in disguise. This en-
abled him to try an experiment which
although he decidedly objected to it,
he had wished to try for some time.
The thought occurred to him that,
had he been a gambler, he might
have got rid of any amount of money
in a very short time. He had heard
and read of fortunes being lost in
single night, he tried the thing with
a party OF professional gamblers
swells. all of them--but professional
gamblers all the same.
or course, he knew that he should
win the first night or two-in stories
tyros always do--and he didn't mind
it for a while; but when 1t kept on
night after night for a month, and
he found that he had more than
doubled the amounts he had at stake.
he thought it was high time to thrown
up the undertaking.
Discouraged and Disguised, he
went to London, where he frequent
ed the East End with large sums of
money in his pockets; visited the
places of popular amusement with |
bullying pocket-books, ill-concealed.
In the hope of thus losing at least |
few thousand pounds. Either the |
police were unusually on the alert |
or the pickpockets had all expert
enced a change of heart. for never
penny could he lose.
Then he returned to New York I
and tried investments. knowing |
that he had no head for business, he
recRoned this lack the strongest asset
in his new plan Whenever he
heard of particularly unpromising
wildcat scheme, he would take few
thousand shares in it-with liability |
II Notwithstanding this about the
surest way to secure a good, healthy |
loss, Not loss could he make, for.
as sure as he took shares in the fish
iest-looking of all mining or other
schemes, the thing would flare up
into the biggest boom 1t had ever
had. and Preston's money would be
trebled before he could get rid of his
stock.
It seemed to him awful.
Then he settled large sums on all
his relatives, and had serious
thnmphis OF naffinn rid Of thu mai.