The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 93: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER VI THE MISER In by no means one of the best streets of Liverpool was situated the dwelling of Mr. Anthony Pollard, attorney at law. He has already been described as a widower, and of grasping, miserly habits. Mrs. Rayner, when a child, —ten. years previous to the time at which we have found her speaking on the subject to Lettice Rodney, — had observed his parsi- monious character, and was disgusted by it, but during those ten years it had become still more inveterate in its greed for gold, — more intense in its eagerness for gain. He had thus acquired all the very worst attributes of the miser, sacrificing every personal comfort to the sole object which he had in view. And yet, not to his knowledge did he possess a single relation on the face of the earth; there was no one whom he loved for whose sake he hoarded up gold, no one whom he cared for, to inherit it. The thought troubled him not that when the cold hand of death should he laid heavily on his shoulder, sending through him that congealing chill which knows no thaw, his heaped-up riches would either devolve to the Crown, or be dissipated in the course of the law’s disputes, or become the prey of any plunderers who might gather in his last moments at his bedside, as the ravens troop to where the corpse will anon be on the field destined for the battle. It was not the question of who should inherit all this wealth that occupied the mind of Anthony Pollard; it was sufficient for him that there was his golden image which he had set up for his own particular worship, no matter what worshipper might succeed him, nor whether the image itself might be shattered, at his death, by the hand of greedy liti- gants or of plunderers intent upon a division of the spoil. Most strange indeed is the money worship of the miser, whose 75 CORNICLOO Ss (E() im