Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1907 — What Russell sages Nephew, Tho Had Fought Against Pouerty All His Life, Did With The $50,000 He Inherited. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

What Russell sages Nephew, Tho Had Fought Against Pouerty All His Life, Did With The $50,000 He Inherited.

WE REPUBLISH herewith the article from Last -Sunday’s Chicago Tribune regarding our ' ‘ J— • c worthy townsman. Elizur Sage, whose relationship to the cel ebrated Russell Sage, of New " ir York City, and his recent receipt from th,» latter’s estate a legacy of $50,000, raising him in one day from a state bi hardship and almost poverty to one of cttmparifive alfitienee, have made him an object not only all over this county, but far ■beyond it. For the *illustrations' Which accentpaliy the article, and in fact are the larger part of it, we are under obligations to the Tribune publishers, who kindly loaned the plates to us. Owing to the fact that that the Tribune’s pages are a column wider than ours, we have been obliged in order to use the pictures, to put the article in across the page. We publish the reading matter of the*- article as well as the pictures, just as they appeared in the Tribune, and do not vouch for their entire accuracy. Regat<ling the pictures of the two houses alleged to be these lived in by Mr. Sage before and after his fortune arrived, they are neither of them what they ph rpoi%to be in that respect, .and neither has ever peen occupied by Mr. Sage. How the Tribune came to use them in this connection seems to be known only to their representative vho came here for the material for the article. It is certain that Mr. Sage himself had nothing to do with that part of the article. —Eimtok’h Note] T.h* iollowiug is the Tribune’s article: When a poor man has the secret fend dream of his heart answered and suddenly comes into .possession of a lot of money —what does he do with it! Elizur Sage is answering that question. Elizur is a nephew, of Russell Sage the lamented New York millionaire. Elizur was a poor ten ant farmer, giving “half the crop’’ to a grasping landlord, and trying to live on the proceeds of the other half. But that stage of his life is over. Elizur Sage is rich, now. He has got in his hands his share of Ids uncle’s estate, and is spend ing the money. V Elizur Bage is buying land. He lives across the line in Jasper county, Indiana, two hours’ rideZrom Chicago. Having been a tenant farmer he is not going to overlook a chance to become a.landlord and take half the other fellow’s crop. Nobody ever knew a tenant farmer, suddenly grown rich, even to bay a new bat until he had paid for bis first farm. If all the Sage money is spent as thriftily and wisely as the share of Elizur is being spent there will be no worry upon the part ofUDcle Russell’s economical spirit

WORLD WAS NOT KIND TO ELIZUR. Elizur was poor. He does not deny it, for the reason that he also is truthful. His was that miserable poverty that settles over its victims like a black cloud darkening their present lives and obscuring [their promises of a future. If the world owes every man a living he has seen many days when he wished the obligation could be canceled with a little more regularity. His outlook on more than one occasion i has been as dreary as an Indiana swamp, and jt wasn’t much brighter than that just before the check came. “Fifty thousand dollars, mused Elizur, “that sure is a pile of money.” “Ain’t it, tlio?” put in his wife, who stood watching him as he twirled the! check in his fingers. ‘ p “Much as the president gets in a whole year,” added his daughter, who now has ithe real piano of her girlhood dreams. “Pats us on Easy street;” chuckled Russell who was named as er his illustrious uncle. And put them on Easy street it did. No more grind stones for Elizur Wage’s nope. No more drudgery for Elizur Hugh’s children. FIRST THING WAR TO BUY A FARM. Elizur has bought a farm. In fact he has bought three farms and is thinking of buying another one. These farms are not Indiana truck patches; they are quarter sections Of good rolling prairie. For one of them the newly rich relative of the former Wall street king paid $17,000. For another he paid $16,000, and for the third, which is rougher than the others, he let go of

SO,OOO. With the $12,000 yet remaining of the pittance from Russell Sage’s pile that made him a rich man Elizur intends to buy still another farm By the time be gets this done he figures the rent will liegin to arrive in sufficient volume to keep him and his family in comfort the rest of their days. In the meantime he sits in the kitchen of one of the best houses in Rensselaer,

which he has rented temporarily, and smokes c rncob pi]>e as he listen to the propositions of those who are anxious to assist him in the mana-

gement of his fortune. To look at Elizur Sage you would fail to understand why he, too, did not become a millionaire,

He has the keen eyes of the financial captains and thaaamaahagwy overhanging eyebrows we see in the pictures of Morgan andßog’ e ™.‘t™ I , Hi8 T$ hil ? 18 almort an exact duplicate of his distilguished uncle s. His lips are thin—almost as thin as a razor’s deten^^d he VO °® thafc Bnipß from befcwe en them is positive and BAD START AND POOR HEALTH. Dressed in a frock coat and a silk hat, Elizur Sage could stand by a Uc Si an f- mj £ e the on - lo °kerß wonder if he had left any of the world for distribution among the rest of us. And yet be was 1 fa u nre U. I ? e B ® Ten yeare of femlD « were no more of a ft™ fc s ao be \ Hls for ye*™ have been gripped by rheumatism, a ?d that demon is more relentless now than it ever was ben hia legß and to® trao ® 01 thecentuiw’ tragedy left in his back by long years of toil. Elizur finds his 57 years a heavy burden. When the information that he had been made a beneficiary of his uncle s will reached him Elizur and his family were iMvfng on a rented farm ten miles north of Rensselaer. Regarding hu Lnd aU nJ °h t Jf* S rm th ?f re “ an amußin Scontroversy between him “J i 8 \? M ? ore ’ ltß OWDer - Dr - Moore ’ who is one of the timers in Rensselaer, and who has a well established reputation for honesty and veracity there, said he rented the place to Bags with the understanding that he was to be given half of the crop He bought a dozen cows and a lot of pigs and chickens, he Sj al^ 8 ’ t° d wl J,en the summer drew to an end all he had to show or ,h’ s share of the farm products was four pounds of butter and eighteen dozen eggs. To this assertion Sage says the doctor’s f a X‘/T UD P r <>ductive that he couldn’t even raise a racket during the six months he was there— in spite of his four ye s™ experience as a drummer boy in the civil war. . .i^ B ® B ®.? l ? beard from New York that he was to share in b 'J? nt ' e 8 W PJ» he bundled his family into a wagon and moved t it I<^l ion in town ’ and ® ver “ n ®® h ® has been having it out with the doctor as to who failed to comply with the agreeBECAME FAMOUS YEARS AGO. Elizur Sage first gained notoriety a few years ago when he borrowed SSO from his millionaire uncle and put first clam mortgage to secure the loan. Elizur was living in the little town Dn i ah i° D ’ 1 ’’ at tbat time and had managed by dintof hard work and close management to save enough to build a house On some ground that had been given him by his fatheral “ O8tco ' n P let ® d when Elizur and his wife discovered that 150 would be needed to buy some trimmings that were to be Ki«^’SM, < TX be "* < *" , ‘ ho, “ e - Toge ‘ thb “»“y - bouse there grew an incident that did much to make Rowell Sage men of hiß time * 11118 WM nothing 1X fethAr »na ? ge to at K to Becare th e loan Elizur Sage, whose father and the New York millionaire were brothers, gave a mortoeHod «?lh new y b JL ilfc ho,we - The money was borrowed for a period of three months, and all of that time Russell Sage’s nephew a 7 regU,ar WaH Htreet X Then l h fl JI d f 5“ of ! h ® mon ®y Mark’s penuriousness became known ‘J?“ unciatlon WBB directed against him from all over the N ®J BPapere 8 P apere correspondents to Channahon to verify nrZin?; J nd r 8 hardly 8 publication or minister of prominence n the land by whom the act was dm. denounced as one unworthy of Shakespeare’s Jew. denounced as ASKED TO FOSE AB A FREAK. n . f?. *5? adv ® rtißia g be received as a a result of the “ 8 Y th h,B , nncl ® 00 that occasion Elizur and his family were(tendered severe! opportunities to exhibit themselves with ipHf^ 1 h C ° mpan1 ® 8 a ™- in mußeumß - All of these offers were ho , wever » 88 Elizur figured it was not his cue to jar the wealthy one’s sense of the fitness of things by any such indiscreet ronduct as was suggested by the eager theatrical and museum promoters. A thousand dollars a week for standing still before • the gaping procession while the barker outside assured the doubting ones that he really and truly was thh actual nephew of Rus sell Sage, and that he actually did give the mortgage for ISO h?™ to E1 I ZUr ’ ® B P ecia, *y iD those days of aeuto Zp“ tlo. onJ 8 r S ry He “ y * yet th “ “ ™ the DRUMMER DURING CIVIL WAR. nah J 8 i at^k r ’ Eli , zu r Sa K® Sr -> moved to the little town of Chap, nahon in the early MOs, and it was there, in the year of the Califorma gold rush, that Elizur was born. Early in 1860 the spirit burned him with an intensity all out of proportion to his years, and before his father knew it the hd had ruaa way to Chicago to join the army. The Seventy -second Illinois regiment, the old “board of trad. h^,Lw b€ ng i f °I m ® < l by I CoL Fred Stockton and Elizur hastened to apply for the place as drummer boy. The bov’s ax. treme youth made the officers of the regimein hrettata before a mg him along with them, bat finally, after much pleading on his part, he won out and the old Seventy-second maronidto iha * depot to the tune of a stirring “Yankee Doodle” rapped ont on a grouch" 1 * 11 by thC y ° QDg nephew of toe world’schampiou With his regiment the boy was sent to join the army of the Cumberland, and in that branch of the federal service he remain, ed until the end of the conflict Altho he was in the thieg several battles, Elizur escaped serious injury until the night bebefore the last stand of the southerners at Vicksburg, anl than CONTINUED on FRONT FAGE. '