new the mode and form in which those
dispositions were to be made.

McDonogh's scheme was certainly a grand one. In the execution of it, a
man of his character and mind might well feel and display the
extraordinary zeal and enthusiasm that gave to his appearance, habits,
and conduct the characteristics of a monomaniac. Without ever once
turning aside for pleasure, ambition, curiosity, affection, or enmity,
he steadily pursued his great design, until death released him from the
severe servitude to which he had bound himself. But, save in this entire
self-abnegation and social exclusion, Mr. McDonogh had none of the
habits of the miser. He was not a usurer, a money-lender, or a
speculator. He did not extort his riches from the distresses and
weaknesses of his fellow-men. He acquired by legitimate purchase, by
entries on public lands. He dealt altogether in land. Stocks,
merchandise, and other personal securities were eschewed by him. The
wonder is, how, with a comparatively small revenue, his property not
being productive, and his favorite policy being to render his lands wild
and unsuited for cultivation, he was able to go on every year expanding
the area of his vast possessions. Such enormous accumulations are not
surprising under the operation of compound interest on sums of money
loaned; but when effected by purchases of unproductive lands, they
constitute a puzzle which the most intimate of Mr. McDonogh's friends
have found it difficult to unravel.

So much for the labor and practice of realities of the life of the
millionaire. We must not conclude our sketch without rounding off the
romance of that life which is the starting-point in the strange career
pursued by him for forty years, with such ascetic severity and
undeviating fidelity. What became of the betrothed of the gay and
wealthy young American, from whom he had experienced the shock and
disappointment that threw so much gloom over and produced such a
thorough change in his future life? She had left with her gallant young
husband, in bright hopes of a brilliant future. For some years their
life in Paris was one of gayety, pleasure, and joyfulness. In the course
of a few years, the dissipations of Paris began to pall upon the taste
of the young couple. With unbounded wealth and means of enjoyment, they
grew _ennuyeed_, discontented, and finally contentious. Jealousy, like a
serpent, stole into their household, and involved the mind of the
husband in her snak