He took advantage of his having to remove to New York where his vast
interests centered; he bought a small and commonplace and, far a rich man,
even mean house in East Fifty-Second Street--one of a raw, and an almost
dingy looking row at that. There he had an establishment a man with
one-fiftieth of his fortune would have felt like apologizing for. To his
few intimates who were intimate enough to question him about his come-down
from his Chicago splendors he explained that he was seeing with clearer
eyes his responsibilities as a steward of the Lord, that luxury was sinful,
that no man had a right to waste the Lord's money.
The general theory about him was that advancing years had developed
his natural closeness into the stingiest avariciousness. But my notion
is he was impelled by the fear of exciting envy, by the fear of
assassination--the fear that made his eyes roam restlessly whenever
strangers were near him, and so dried up the inside of his body that his
dry tongue was constantly sliding along his dry lips. I have seen a convict
stand in the door of his cell and, though it was impossible that any one
could be behind him, look nervously over his shoulder every moment or so.
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