Mrs. Grundy. (Tracy City, Tenn.) 1903-1930, 1911-05-25
RICH MEN IN CARPETS
MILLIONAIRE WHO CHOOSE TO
LIVE LIKE HERMITs.
Eccentrieities of G. E. Dering and Sir
Henry DeIves Broushton Of Eng
nd-Solodovnikoff, the Mlser
King of ST. Petersburg.

The vanity of riches" has never
been more strikingly demonstrated
than by the story of G. E. Dering, who
recently died at Lockley Hall, Walwyn.
For the greater part Of half CEN
fury this lord of many acres and of
quarter of a million of money has
been content to lead the life Of a
hermit in his magnificent home sur
rounded by thousand acres of park
land. His valuable pictures-by Hol-
bein, Fra Bartolomeo and other old
masters-have stood for a generation
stocked three deep with their faces
turned to the walls; a generation Of
dust had settled undisturbed on Ores
den vases, gold and enamel clocks,
statuary Ssld costly furniture.
Gorgeous carriages, rich with her
aldic painting, lay rotting in his coach
house; his front door was overgrown
with ivy as high as the stone shield of
arms that crowned it. Not even a
lamb was allowed to hleat within hear
ing OF the lord of this desolate man
verted, that no sound of traffic should
vex his ears. Thus, amid dust, decay
and desolation, lived and died the
owner Of e25.000 year, stunning the
world and scorning his wealth.
And so it has always been and al
ways will be. One man squandered
his gold; another boards or despises
1t. 1t Is but few years since one of
our wealthiest baronets-a man with
a rent roll of 100000 a year-died
in miserable attic near Water
loo Bridge, His sordid room was pa
pered with illustrations from the week
ly papers; he never crossed its
threshold except for an occasional
solitary ramble by night; no one was
ever allowed to enter his dreary sane
tum, his meals being left for him out
side the door; and his long days were
spent looking through his attic win.
dow on the moving panorama of the
Thames.
While Sir Henry Delves Broughton
was sitting at his attic window a man
Infinitely richer was walking the
streets of st. Petersburg in the guise
of beggar, pocketing the aims of
charitable passers-by, and gleefully
carrying back his spoil to his miser-
able two-storied cottage in one of the
city's Sums
That was the only palace" of the
multi-millionaire Solodovnikoff, where
he lived among his decrepit sticks of
furniture with an old housekeeper
Here he would sit shivering through
the cold winter days, too misery to
allow himself fire or even to bright
en- the dark house with the light of a
solitary candle. For 20 years he was
only known to wear one suit, thing
of shreds and patches" scarcely g
vestige of the original cloth remain
ing. And yet this sordid.living her
NIT was one of the greatest landown
ers and railway magnates in all Rus
sia--a man who left behind him hun
dred million roubles. Far weather
than many kings, he led life from
which most peasants would have
shrunk.
A few years ago there was nj
Weather man in all Paris than M
Colasson, who for generation hac
lived as pauper in two rooms Of hi
magnificent palace in the Rue Galilee
During all this period he never one,
left his splendid prison, and no on,
oil 70 .
his one faithful attendant, who KEEP
him supplied with his daily food o
bread and eggs. AS in Mr.. Dering'
case, 1t was the death of father tina
consigned him to his hermit life. S
with NJ Colasson 1t was the tragi
death by fire Of loved nephew an
heir in 1874 that decided him to fol-
swear the world and all its vanities.-
Tit-Bits.