In the mean time, the money lender, not being content with the wealth he had obtained by taking undue advantage of the distresses of others, and becoming every day more greedy, launched out into mighty speculations. He founded a score of towns without any houses in them; dealt by hundreds of thousands in fancy stocks; and finally became the victim of one of his own speculations, by in time coming to believe in the very deceptions he had practised upon others. It is an old saying, that the greatest rogue in the world, sooner or latter, meets with his match, and so it happened with the money lender. He was seduced into the purchase of a town without any houses in it, at an expense of millions; was met by one of those reactions that play the mischief with honest labourers, and thus finally perished in a bottomless pit of his own digging. Finding himself sinking, he resorted to forgeries, and had by this means raised money to such an amount, that his villany almost approached to sublimity. His property, as the phrase is, came under the hammer, and Johannes purchased his own house at half the price it cost him in building.
The good St. Nicholas trembled at the new ordeal to which Johannes had subjected himself; but finding, when he visited him, as he did regularly every Newyear's eve, that he was cured of his foolish vanities, and that his wife was one of the best housekeepers in all Fort Orange, he discarded his apprehensions, and rejoiced in the prosperity that was borne so meekly and wisely. The little fat Dutchman lived a long time in expectation that the stranger in the one-horse wagon would come for the payment of his purse of money; but finding that year after year rolled away without his appearing, often said to himself, as he sat on his stoop with a pipe in his mouth,
“I'll be dondered if I don't believe it was the good St. Nicholas.”
THE END.
INTERESTING WORKS
PUBLISHED BY
HARPER & BROTHERS,
New-York.
In 3 vols. 18mo., with Engravings, Maps, &c.,
=THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS=.
From the earliest Period to the Present Time.
By the Rev. H. H. MILMAN.