[A Miscalculation.]
We have in England an old story of a luckless wight, who, having calculated he should live a certain number of years, parcelled out his income accordingly; but finding he lived to become penniless, he took to begging, and affixed on his breast a small box to receive contributions, with this brief but significant prayer: "Pray remember a poor man who has lived longer than he thought he should."
In 1843, the counterpart of this strange story really happened in Paris to a man named Jules André Gueret. When twenty-five years of age, he possessed a considerable fortune, and resolved never to marry. He converted his entire estate into hard cash, and, in order not to suffer any losses from failures, depreciation of property, &c., he kept his money in his own possession. He had made the following calculation:—"The life of a sober man extends over a period of seventy years; that of a man who denies himself no kind of amusement may attain fifty-five or sixty; thus the whole of my hopes cannot go beyond that period; at any rate, as a last resort, suicide is at my command." He divided his money into equal portions for each year's expenditure. This division was so nicely arranged, that, at the expiration of the sixtieth year, Gueret would have nothing left, and each year he scrupulously spent the sum set apart. But, alas! he had not reflected on the clinging attachment of man to life, for in 1843, having exceeded the prescribed period, he patiently submitted to his misfortune, and, being then old and infirm, he took his stand on the Quai des Célestins with a small box and a few lucifer-matches, living on the charity of the passers-by. He wore suspended round his neck a piece of pasteboard, on which were written the following lines of his own composing:—
"Ayez pitié, passants, du pauvre André Gueret,
Dont la vie est plus longue, hélas! qu'il ne croyait."
The cholera carried him off at last, to the great regret of the artistes of the Ile St. Louis, whose leisure hours he whiled away by the relation of his youthful recollections. He died in one of the hospitals of Paris.
[An Indiscriminate Collector.]
In the Scotsman, May, 1866, we find the following curious case of eccentricity related as having occurred in the city of Edinburgh: it is strongly tinged with oddity, and would be fairly laughed at did it not present a lamentable instance of waste of means. The details are as follows:—A good many years ago, a gentleman who filled a prominent situation in one of the Edinburgh banks, at a good old age, married his servant. The pair lived happily together for several years, when the gentleman died, leaving by his will 1,000l. to his widow, in addition to an annuity of 300l. and a mansion, which he had built and elegantly furnished; it is situated in the midst of a garden, surrounded by a high stone wall. Shortly after her husband's death, the widow became notorious for two peculiarities: first, the rigid exclusion of all visitors from her house, the invariable answer to all entreaties to see her being that she was not at home, or could not be seen; the second was her constant attendance at book and most other sales which took place in Edinburgh, where during the season she might daily be seen carrying a large blue bag, in which she deposited and carried home her purchases, which were of the most miscellaneous description. Matters went on thus for some twenty years. On Sunday, May 6, 1866, the old lady, in her usual health, went into her garden to take the air, and, as she did not return so speedily as was her wont, her servant looked out at the main door, when she found her mistress sitting on the stone steps dead. This unexpected event speedily cleared up the mystery which enveloped her domestic relations.
On the house being entered by warrant from the sheriff, it was found converted into a vast magazine for the conservation of the purchases of the last twenty years. The lobby had been decorated with statuary figures, standing, with the pedestals, some eight feet high; but these were totally hidden by piles of books, intermixed with rubbish of every description, heaped up on every side—a narrow passage being left in the centre. Every room in the house was filled with piles of books, rotten mattresses, stuffed dogs, female dresses, made and unmade, cheap jewelry, old bonnets, pictures, and prints, with a great variety of other articles, intermixed with straw, hair, shavings, &c., which covered all the floors to the depth of several feet; and similar piles filled the beds, and lay heaped on every article of furniture in the house. The smell from the mass of festering rubbish was intolerable. Upwards of five tons weight of books had to be removed before the rooms could be inspected. Most of the smaller articles were found tied up in bags or parcels, in the state in which they had been brought home. The deceased, it seems, cleared a hole which she had scooped out amid a vast quantity of rubbish in one of the rooms, and there, on the floor, with only a hair mattress beneath her, the tick of which had rotted away on one side, she took her rest in the dress she daily wore, without blankets or covering of any kind.
The deceased, though a purchaser of books to so large an extent, never read any, nor knew anything of their value; and when asked what were their uses, her answer was that she brought them to present to ministers or the children of her friends. The tenacity with which she preserved the secrets of her prison-house may also be judged of by the fact that her servant, a young Highland girl, had never, though she had been six months in her service, been beyond the walls of the garden. The girl was carefully locked up every time the deceased left the house until her return, and she never was allowed to go out of her mistress' sight.