Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1883 — Out of Money. [ARTICLE]

Out of Money.

To be out of money iq a country where scarcely a native, much less a foreigner, can find anythihg to do to get his bread, is a serious matter, as the reader can judge. Bayard Taylor in his young and enterprising days went through Europe living “front hand “to moifth,” and occasionally he found himself in such a dilemma. Some readers will remem|>er his story of his predicament at Lyons, when a letter (long waited for) came, with money in it to replenish his empty pocket, but with fourteen sous postage due on it! and he was forced to contrive a stratagem to borrow a franc of his landlady before he could get the letter. He relates another incidents of similar straits, in the city of Florence, while his two traveling companions were gone to Leghorn to procure the much-needed cash upon a banker’s draft: “They were to be absent three or four days, and had left me money enough to live on in the meantime, but the next morning our bill for washing came in, and consumed nearly the whole of it. I had about four crazie (three cents) a dayTeftYor~rny meals, and by spending one of these for bread and the remain-; der for ripe figs (of which one crazie will purchase fifteen or twenty), and roasted chestnuts, I managed to make a diminutive breakfast and dinner, but was careful not to take much exercise, on account of the increase of hunger. ; As it happened, my friends remained two days longer than I had expected/ and the last two crazie I had were expended for one day’s provisions. I then decided to try the next day without anything, and actually felt a curiosity to know what one’s sensation would be on experiencing two or three days of starvation. I knew that if the feeling should become insupportable, I could easily walk out to the mountain of Fiesole, where a fine fig-orchard shades the old Roman amphitheater, 37But tlje experiment was broken off at its commencement by the arrival of the absent ones, in the middle of the following night. Such is the weakness of human nature, that on finding I should not want for breakfast. I arose from bed and ate the two or three remaining figs, which by astrong exertion I had saved from the scanty allowance of the day. _____