"Haggard, H Rider- When the World Shook" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haggard H. Rider)

"Very well," I said, "I will leave you њ600,000 on which you
shall pay me five per cent interest, but no share of the
profits."

On these terms we dissolved the partnership and in a year they
had lost the њ600,000, for the slump came with a vengeance. It
saved them, however, and to-day they are earning a reasonable
income. But I have never asked them for that њ600,000.



Chapter II

Bastin and Bickley


Behold me once more a man without an occupation, but now the
possessor of about њ900,000. It was a very considerable fortune,
if not a large one in England; nothing like the millions of which
I had dreamed, but still enough. To make the most of it and to
be sure that it remained, I invested it very well, mostly in
large mortgages at four per cent which, if the security is good,
do not depreciate in capital value. Never again did I touch a
single speculative stock, who desired to think no more about
money. It was at this time that I bought the Fulcombe property.
It cost me about њ120,000 of my capital, or with alterations,
repairs, etc., say њ150,000, on which sum it may pay a net two
and a half per cent, not more.

This њ3,700 odd I have always devoted to the upkeep of the
place, which is therefore in first-rate order. The rest I live
on, or save.

These arrangements, with the beautifying and furnishing of the
house and the restoration of the church in memory of my father,
occupied and amused me for a year or so, but when they were
finished time began to hang heavy on my hands. What was the use
of possessing about њ20,000 a year when there was nothing upon
which it could be spent? For after all my own wants were few and
simple and the acquisition of valuable pictures and costly
furniture is limited by space. Oh! in my small way I was like
the weary King Ecclesiast. For I too made me great works and had
possessions of great and small cattle (I tried farming and lost
money over it!) and gathered me silver and gold and the peculiar
treasure of kings, which I presume means whatever a man in
authority chiefly desires, and so forth. But "behold all was
vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the
sun."