Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1890 — Rich Men's Possible Woes. [ARTICLE]

Rich Men's Possible Woes.

“The very lich people are to be pitied,” said a well-known capitalist and clubman the other day to a New York correspondent of the Kansas City Star. “When a man once gets a large fortune there is no emolument worth striving for, for if he tries and succeeds in winning it the world says that his confliot was made easy by liis wealth. If he has political aspirations he is accused of purchasing votes and favor. If he wants to shine in literature it is declared that he hires an author to write his books. He is not permitted to have an honest love for art, for when he becomes a collector it is said that he buys pictures by the yard and statuary as though it were cheese. John Jacob Astor, who died recently, could have been Minister to England under President Hayes, but he refused the position because he knew the nation would declare that it was given in reward for his contribution to the campaign fund. In his whole lite John •Jacob Astor was nothing more than a real estate agent on a large scale, and hi 5 end was accomplished by gout, the bane of all rich men. Gout is the inevitable result of affluence. It is good food and what is now called good cooking that produces gout, and the man of large means is sure to have both.

Mr. Astor was what might be called a quiet liver, that is he was perfectly temperate in his appetites. Besides this he was an extraordinarily strong youth and began his life of luxury with a constitution of iron. But the steady, unbroken comforts and plenitudes of his existence did their work, and he died at sixty-eight, looking as hearty as any man in New York. It has sometimes been observed that gout is a fashionable ailment, but in reality it is a prevalent and deadly disease among the luxurious men in New York, and nearly every club window has a big redfaced man in it who is haunted by the realization that he may be called to his reckoning at any moment. If these men had ever been tempted into the fields of endeavor and taken pot-luck with the regular toilers of the earth they would be all right, but the smooth elegance of doing nothing that they have indulged in, together with the wines and spiced delicacies that have formed their sustenance, has put them into pretty much the same physical condition as those geese that we make into pates de fois gras. I advise the poor not to envy the rich. I will wager that they are as unhappy as anybody. The richer they are the more unhappy they are. They cannot go into the struggle for fame, they mistrust the motives of every new acquaintance, and they invariably have the gout. You will not find a more sorrowful looking set of men in New York than the ones that belong to my club. And they are the very richest citizens we have. In fact, lam a pretty sad dog myself.”