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Title: The Soul of Nicholas Snyders
Or, The Miser Of Zandam

Author: Jerome K. Jerome

Release Date: July 27, 2008 [EBook #869]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Ron Burkey, and Amy Thomte

THE SOUL OF NICHOLAS SNYDERS, OR THE MISER OF ZANDAM

By Jerome K. Jerome

Author of "Paul Kelver," "Three Men in a Boat," etc., etc.

NEW YORK DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 1909

COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY JEROME K. JEROME COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY DODD, MEAD &
COMPANY Published, September, 1908

THE SOUL OF NICHOLAS SNYDERS, OR THE MISER OF ZANDAM

Once upon a time in Zandam, which is by the Zuider Zee, there lived a
wicked man named Nicholas Snyders. He was mean and hard and cruel, and
loved but one thing in the world, and that was gold. And even that
not for its own sake. He loved the power gold gave him--the power to
tyrannize and to oppress, the power to cause suffering at his will.
They said he had no soul, but there they were wrong. All men own--or,
to speak more correctly, are owned by--a soul; and the soul of Nicholas
Snyders was an evil soul. He lived in the old windmill which still is
standing on the quay, with only little Christina to wait upon him and
keep house for him. Christina was an orphan whose parents had died in
debt. Nicholas, to Christina's everlasting gratitude, had cleared
their memory--it cost but a few hundred florins--in consideration that
Christina should work for him without wages. Christina formed his entire
household, and only one willing visitor ever darkened his door, the
widow Toelast. Dame Toelast was rich and almost as great a miser as
Nicholas himself. "Why should not we two marry?" Nicholas had once
croaked to the widow Toelast. "Together we should be masters of all
Zandam." Dame Toelast had answered with a cackling laugh; but Nicholas
was never in haste.

One afternoon Nicholas Snyders sat alone at his desk in the centre of
the great semi-circular room that took up half the ground floor of the
windmill, and that served him for an office, and there