mber with gratitude the magnificent Beckford, with
his glorious "rich man's folly" of Fonthill Abbey, a lordly pleasure
house which naturally sprang from the same Aladdin-like fancy which
produced "Vathek."

I but mention one or two such typical examples at random to illustrate
the difference between past and present. At present the rich man's
paucity of originality is so painful that we even welcome a certain
millionaire's _penchant_ for collecting fleas--he, it is rumoured,
having paid as much as a thousand dollars for specimens of a
particularly rare species. It is a passion perhaps hard to understand,
but, at least, as we say, it is "different." Mr. Carnegie's more
comprehensible hobby for building libraries shows also no little
originality in a man of a class which is not as a rule devoted to
literature. Another millionaire I recently read of, who refused to pay
the smallest account till it had run for five years, and would then
gladly pay it, with compound interest at five per cent., has something
refreshing about him; while still another rich eccentric, who has lived
on his yacht anchored near the English coast for some fifteen years or
so in order to avoid payment of his American taxes, and who occasionally
amuses himself by having gold pieces heated white hot and thrown into
the sea for diving boys to pick them up, shows a quaint ingenuity which
deserves our gratitude. Another modern example of how to spend, or
waste, one's money picturesquely was provided by the late Marquis of
Anglesey, a young lord generally regarded as crazy by an ungrateful
England. Perhaps it was a little crazy in him to spend so much money in
the comparatively commonplace adventure of taking an amateur dramatic
company through the English provinces, he himself, I believe, playing
but minor roles; but lovers of Gautier's _Le Capitaine Fracasse_ will
see in that but a charmingly boyish desire to translate a beloved dream
into a reality--though his creditors probably did not take that view.
Neither, one can surmise, did those gentlemen sufficiently appreciate
his passion for amassing amazing waistcoats, of which some seven hundred
were found in his wardrobe at his lamented death; or strange and
beautiful walking sticks, a like prodigious collection of which were
among the fantastic assets which represented his originally large
personal fortune on the winding up of his earthly affairs. Among these
unimaginative creditors were, doubtless, man