ak any one language well.

Yet when John Jacob wrote, it was English without a flaw. In all his
dealings he was uniquely honorable and upright. He paid and he made
others pay. His word was his bond. He was not charitable in the sense of
indiscriminate giving. "To give something for nothing is to weaken the
giver," was one of his favorite sayings. That this attitude protected a
miserly spirit, it is easy to say, but it is not wholly true. In his
later years he carried with him a book containing a record of his
possessions. This was his breviary. In it he took a very pardonable
delight. He would visit a certain piece of property, and then turn to
his book and see what it had cost him ten or twenty years before. To
realize that his prophetic vision had been correct was to him a great
source of satisfaction.

His habits were of the best. He went to bed at nine o'clock, and was up
before six. At seven he was at his office. He knew enough to eat
sparingly and to walk, so he was never sick.

Millionaires as a rule are wofully ignorant. Up to a certain sum, they
grow with their acquisitions. Then they begin to wither at the heart.
The care of a fortune is a penalty. I advise the gentle reader to think
twice before accumulating ten millions. John Jacob Astor was exceptional
in his combined love of money and love of books. History was at his
tongue's end, and geography was his plaything. Fitz-Greene Halleck was
his private secretary, hired on a basis of literary friendship.
Washington Irving was a close friend, too, and first crossed the
Atlantic on an Astor pass. He banked on Washington Irving's genius, and
loaned him money to come and go, and buy a house. Irving was named in
Astor's will as one of the trustees of the Astor Library Fund, and
repaid all favors by writing "Astoria."

Astor died, aged eighty-six. It was a natural death, a thing that very
seldom occurs. The machinery all ran down at once. Realizing his lack of
book advantages, he left by his will four hundred thousand dollars to
found the Astor Library, in order that others might profit where he had
lacked. He also left fifty thousand dollars to his native town of
Waldorf, a part of which money was used to found an Astor Library there.
God is surely good, for if millionaires were immortal, their money would
cause them great misery and the swollen fortunes would crowd mankind,
not only 'gainst the wall, but into the sea. Death is the deliverer, for
Time checks po