The Miser and the Missing Gold
A cautionary tale of a man who loved his gold more than his own peace of mind, only to find that hoarding it under a stone offered no security from the opportunistic thief.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A man whose eyes were such that he could only coin and money see, amassed at length a goodly pile, but had no real joy the while: Poorly he lived, and sad and cross he grew, from fear of sudden loss. So taking all his gold one day, he bore the treasure far away, and hid it in a distant lot beneath a stone which marked the spot. But ah! no miser e'er was wise; and you can judge this one's surprise and frantic grief when he drew near the place once more, unmoved by fear, and found a thief had come by stealth and carried off his worldly wealth. As he was raging at the wrong, a quiet traveler came along, and asked him, 'Friend, pray tell me why you make such pitiful outcry?' 'My gold is gone—there's no relief; oh, if I only knew the thief.' 'But why did you conceal it here? We have no war—what did you fear? If you had kept it at your home, I doubt if any thief had come.' 'I touched it not—loans I refused; I kept it here not to be used.' Then said the man: 'If that's the case, why do you have so sad a face? Put back the stone—say nothing more—and you're as well off as before!'
“My gold is gone—there's no relief; oh, if I only knew the thief. But why did you conceal it here? We have no war—what did you fear?”
This 1882 fable speaks to the persistent tension in Seattle between the desire to hoard land and wealth versus the social necessity of keeping capital in motion. Today, as the city grapples with the impact of concentrated property ownership and real estate speculation, the old miser’s realization—that an unused asset is effectively invisible to its owner—remains a biting critique of urban housing policy.
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