Rich

The good ship Teno churned its way through many a mile of water until it finally glided silently alongside a dock that was in Manhattan.

Down the gangplank walked Simon Y. Patino, Bolivian Minister to Spain, a man worth ten times ten million good U. S. dollars. This short, broad man with a pug-dog face was accompanied by two sons, Rene and Onlino, two secretaries, two valets, one manager, one physician and 50 pieces of luggage. To the immigration men he handed a diplomatic passport.

From the docks, he drove straightway to a large hotel. At this point, enthusiastic journalists, bereft of all reason, had multiplied his fortune, exaggerated his power, invented many things. They could not decide whether the mining magnate of South America had taken seven or nine rooms at his hotel, half a floor or a whole floor-- at any rate he stayed at a hotel.

It was definitely known that Bolivia's richest man was in the U. S. on a business mission. But what that business was nobody knew; though it was darkly hinted that the mission was concerned with the organization of a $50,000,000 corporation "which is to administer part of his property in Brazil."

Simon Patino started life 59 years ago. Aged 28 (when he was an insignificant storekeeper), he raised the enormous fortune of $18,000 to buy a tin mine. Since then, he has become richer and richer and still richer. He dislikes discomfort, and--as he has money with which to buy comfort--he keeps no fewer than 13 chateaux in various parts of the world--Nice, Biarritz, London, Paris, et cetera.