Page:London - The People of the Abyss.djvu/384



⸿ The hero is a young New Yorker of good parts who, to save an inheritance of seven millions, starts out to spend a fortune of one million within a year. An eccentric uncle, ignorant of the earlier legacy, leaves him seven millions to be delivered at the expiration of a year, on the condition that at that time he is penniless, and has proven himself a capable business man, able to manage his own affairs. The problem that confronts Brewster is to spend his legacy without proving himself either reckless or dissipated. He has ideas about the disposition of the seven millions which are not those of the uncle when he tried to supply an alternative in case the nephew failed him. His adventures in pursuit of poverty are decidedly of an unusual kind, and his disappointments are funny in quite a new way. The situation is developed with an immense amount of humor.