f his
enemy, on the other side. It occurred to him that, as all these lots
were surveyed at the same time by the same party, it was most likely
that as his line had gone six inches too far on the one side, his
enemy's had gone as much too far on the other. And so it was. He had
quietly a survey made of the premises, and he chuckled with inward joy
to find that he held this winning card in the unfriendly game. With grim
politeness the neighbors exchanged deeds for the two half feet of
ground, and their war ended. The moral of this incident is for him who
hath wit enough to see it.

For several seasons he came every morning to North Beach to take
sea-baths. Sometimes he rode his well-known white horse, but oftener he
walked. He bathed in the open sea, making, as one expressed it,
twenty-five tents out of the Pacific Ocean, by avoiding the bathhouse.
Was this the charm that drew him forth so early? It not seldom chanced
that we walked downtown together. At times he was quite communicative,
speaking of himself in a way that was peculiar. It seems he had thoughts
of marrying before his episode with the widow.

"Do you think a young girl of twenty could love an old man like me?" he
asked me one day, as we were walking along the street.

I looked at his huge and ungainly bulk, and into his animal face, and
made no direct answer. Love! Six millions of dollars is a great sum.
Money may buy youth and beauty, but love does not come at its call.
God's highest gifts are free; only the second-rate things can be bought
with money. Did this sordid old man yearn for pure human love amid his
millions? Did such a dream cast a momentary glamour over a life spent in
raking among the muck-heaps? If so, it passed away, for he never
married.

He understood his own case. He knew in what estimation he was held by
the public, and did not conceal his scorn for its opinion.

"My love of money is a disease. My saving and hoarding as I do is
irrational, and I know it. It pains me to pay five cents for a streetcar
ride, or a quarter of a dollar for a dinner. My pleasure in accumulating
property is morbid, but I have felt it from the time I was a foot
peddler in Charlotte, Campbell, and Pittsylvania counties, in Virginia,
until now. It is a sort of insanity, and it is incurable; but it is
about as good a form of madness as any, and all the world is mad in
some, fashion."

This was the substance of what he said of himself when in one of his
mood