A Colored Millionaire

Men whose taxes foot up from one to ten thousand eaoh year can get 2 per C3iit. a month for it, or use it in even more lucrativa ways, while the interest on their texes is nothing in comparison. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are retained in this way. A notable instance of this practice is the case of a colored millionaire who has dodged paying his taxes untü they now amount to nfiarly$100,000, duo to the city and State. This man is a character for a romanee. He is so abstemious that he may be called a miser. He disdains rest, and with wonderful activity works on in a small and obscure one-story house, reinóte from the business portions of the city. This building is his office and his home. It is dingy and dilapidated on the outside. Within, a kind of lobby, partitioned offfroin the main room, is the miser's office. A desk full of pigeon holes crammed with papers, an iron safo and a chair or two, constitute the only furniture. Beyond are the rooms where he lives with his mother, a woman almost 100 years old. Yet this man, sö unpretentious in his business surroundings, has nearly a hundred tenements scattered all over the city, which bring him anywhere rom $2,000 to $2,300 per month. He owns over 250 different properties estimated to be worth at least $700,000 besides bonda and cash to a large amount This man, however, ncver pays any taxes except when he disposes of a piece o property, and then only on that proper ty. In the Sheriff's office are tax-writ against him dating back twelve years and to some of them are attached asinuc as six yards of foolscap, tilled throughou with closely written descriptions of hi properties. The reason lor avoiding hi annual taxes is a speculative one. Th city charges him 10 per cent. interest on his money, which he never loans excep on mortgage ; he can make from 18 t '2-t per cent. Every tenth year, also th taxes of one ycar are wiped out by scription.