Hoard

“ My heart beat quick as I approached the spot; my hoard might have been discovered, and if it had been removed my child would be a beggar, dependent upon the charity of strangers; she might even be thrust into the street, to herd with the vile and worthless, when the care of her became irksome or expensive to her present protectors. ”

“ Gold or silver thus brought to rest as money, forms a hoard. Among nations with an exclusively metallic circulation, such as the ancients were, hoarding is practiced universally from the individual to the state which guards its state hoard. ”

“ Each person most vigilantly scrutinized his hoard, fearing that in an unguarded moment a fortune might slip through his hands and be lost. Even the stranger passing along was hardly given a glance, so eager was each individual in searching for the precious pebble. ”

“ A gentleman, with whose case I am acquainted, was discovered, after his death, to have a hoard in his barn of all sorts of articles, mainly of a trumpery sort, but including pieces of silver which he had stolen from his own dining-room, and utensils which he had stolen from his own kitchen, and for which he had afterward bought substitutes with his own money. ”

“ The only good I have ever been able to see in a small house is, that no one can possibly hoard there. If hoarding is begun it cannot be carried on, because if it were, there would speedily be no room to turn round. ”

“ The accumulated wealth of centuries, their houses and lands, their money, their vessels of silver and their vessels of gold, their ancient cups and goblets and salvers, even to their very chairs and tables, were all set down in inventories and catalogues, and all swept into the great robbers' hoard. ”

“ And as in the fields thieves and plunderers sometimes stole and took by force the corn and bread which others had toiled to get, he invented the art of building towns, forts, and castles, to hoard and secure that staff of life. ”

“ Their conquerors knew nothing of the gold and jewels hidden in the desert three hundred miles distant, and that marvelous hoard, gathered from Persia and India by generations of traders, has lain there for nearly two thousand years. ”

“ He was also well acquainted with their treasures and secret hoards, and sometimes upbraided them on that account; for as often as they seemed to act sparingly p. 89and avariciously, he used to say, “Why are you afraid to spend that heap of gold or silver, since your lives are of so short duration, and the money you so cautiously hoard up will never do you any service?” He gave the choicest meat and drink to the rustics and hired servants, saying that “Those persons should be abundantly supplied, by whose labours they were acquired.” ”

“ As it was impossible for them to remain more than a few hours on the same spot the utmost despatch was necessary in rifling any towns or villages into which they could force an entrance; every one whose appearance indicated the probability of his possessing money was immediately put to the most horrid torture till he either pointed out his hoard or died under the infliction. ”

“ The city yielded a rich hoard of plunder, being well stored with gold and feather-work, and many other articles of use or luxury, so that when the general mustered his men upon the neighbouring plain before resuming his march, many of them came staggering under the weight of their spoil. ”

“ A hoard, collected from the simple productions of nature, or a herd of cattle, are, in every rude nation, the first species of wealth. The circumstances of the soil, and the climate, determine whether the inhabitant shall apply himself chiefly to agriculture or pasture ”

“ The hoarder despises the worldly, temporary and transitory enjoyments in his hunt after the eternal treasure, which neither moth nor rust can eat, which is perfectly celestial and earthly at the same time. ”

“ Shut off from the possibility of personal bequests or of “founding a family,” the guardians will have no stimulus to laying up a hoard of material goods; nay, they will not be moved to such hoarding by fear of the morrow, for a modest but sufficient maintenance will be supplied them by the working classes. ”

“ In 1837 a little hoard of them was brought to light on Furzeleigh farm, three miles from here, while gravel and stone were being dug out to mend a road; and these were coins of Valerianus, Gallienus, Postumus, Victorinus, and Claudius Gothicus, whose short and stormy reigns began and ended between 253 and 270 A.D. Hoards are buried even now. Countryfolk lose money by bad investments or through the failure of a bank; and then there is a scare, and many of them convert their savings into coin, and hide or bury it. ”

“ Another peculiarity with many is to hoard money at the expense of bodily comfort. It is buried in some secret place, and the owner dies without even caring to inform his kin of the whereabouts of his treasures. ”

“ His iron boxes and money chests are opened by Death, who is leading the miser's delighted heirs into the treasure-chamber, where the bags of wealth, heaps of coin, and files of securities have banished all remembrance of the miserable corpse, lately the self-denying hoarder of these superfluous riches. ”

“ Writers, administrators, the Church from its pulpit, the Press in its columns, all to whom chance has given power to influence the masses, should say and resay this truth,—to hoard is a social crime. The deliberate hoarding of a province arrests industrial life, and injures the health of a nation.
Thus the little town of Arcis, without much means of transition, doomed apparently to the most complete immobility, is, relatively, a rich town abounding in capital slowly amassed by its trade in hosiery.
Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage was the Alexander, or, if you will, the Attila of this business. ”

“ Other envoys were found and despatched with letters full of enthusiastic accounts of the wealth of the country, a portion of the gold obtained being also sent, each man giving some of his private hoard to swell the general amount. ”

“ It was also a common occurrence for a miser to hide away his hoards underground, and before he had an opportunity of making known their whereabouts he died, without his heirs being put in the necessary possession of the information regarding that part of the earth wherein he had kept secreted his wealth. At different times, in old houses have been discovered misers' hoards, and which, but for some accident, would have remained buried in their forgotten resting-place. ”

“ The hoards of some of the native princes are enormous. The treasure of the Maharajah of Burdwan occupied half a dozen or more large rooms and vaults. These hoards acquire in time a sort of sanctity as a family treasure, and it becomes a point of honor not to break into them; so that they are not drawn upon except in extreme cases. Hoarding is common among the thrifty peasantry of Europe ”

“ Then the fugitives commenced to use their money to buy food that they might have strength 21 for the journey, and they whispered one to another that the people looked with covetous eyes on their hoard of money and jewels, and they feared they would be slain because of the greed of the people. ”

“ When the despatching of sums from one city to another instead of taking minutes by telegraph or hours by post occupy, under normal circumstances, days, weeks, a month or even more, because the payments are made in solid silver which has to travel by caravan, it is easy to understand how the dangerous system of hoarding comes to be practised with impunity and facility all over Persia. ”

“ Why, Joanna, that is the clearing of two pounds twelve and three-pence per annum. At that rate you may burn coals and I will not grumble.’
‘There is nothing like thrift, is there, master?’
‘Ah,’ said the Jew, ‘talk of the beauties of nature! What I look to is the moral lessons it preaches. How many of your holiday-takers, who run over the sea cliffs, look at the thrift that covers them, and lay the flower to heart? I’m not one who approves of hoarding. Hoarding is a low and savage virtue, but Turning over is the cultured virtue. Turn your eggs and they don’t addle, but they won’t set. ”

“ Only if the coal strike comes on, I think you’ll find that the regulations against hoarding are quite as severe as they ever were. Food hoarding, too. Twemlow​—​such a civil man​—​tells me that he thinks we shall have plenty of food, or anyhow sufficient for everybody for quite a long time, provided that there’s no hoarding. Not been hoarding food, too, dear Diva? You naughty thing: I believe that great cupboard is full of sardines and biscuits and bovril. ”

“ They are firmly persuaded that among the black ruins everywhere great hoards lie buried. Inscriptions, they think, contain directions how the precious stores are to be found, if they could only be read. ”

“ One side of the road for men, and the other for women, and a hoarding—without posters—between them. Every boy and girl to be sewn up in a sack and sealed, just the head and hands and feet out until twenty-one. ”

“ From the earliest days of the famine her house and her stores were ever ready to supply the wants of the homeless, the poor, the suffering; her wealth was freely spent for food for the starving while supplies could yet be bought either near or in distant baronies; and when known supplies failed her lavish offers tempted the churlish farmers, who still hoarded grain that they might enrich themselves in the great dearth, to sell some of their garnered stores. ”

“ Man is, by nature, a hoarding animal; and his endeavours to accumulate property will be proportioned to the security and stability which the laws afford for the possession and enjoyment of that property. ”

“ Everyone is familiar with the varying strength and weakness of the instincts of getting and hoarding as shown by his neighbors and acquaintances. Some seem to have no ambition or thought for getting or keeping money. Some can get it but cannot keep it. Some have in them from childhood the instinct for getting the better of every trade; for hoarding what they get, and accumulating property all their lives. ”

“ In both cases, the treasure which is intentionally and intelligently buried is liable to be lost through the removal or death of those who were in the secret. Such secreted and lost wealth is afterwards from time to time found by those who build houses or cultivate the soil. In all lands and ages some such hoards have been actually discovered, and many such have been imagined and expected by the credulous. The conditions of the treasure that may be buried under ground exist in substances widely different from gold and silver and precious stones. ”

“ But the instinct of hoarding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the institution of private property comes another institution—that of plunder and brigandage. ”

“ Having done this, and replaced, as well as possible in the circumstances, the piece of hoarding, I allowed the constable to pass on before moving further. My heart beat high for a moment as the glare from his lantern flashed through the chinks and lighted, like the gleaming of a fire, the miserable and musty-smelling apartment ”

“ The ingenuity that is bred by an empty stomach soon set the French on the search for these hoards. When it was once discovered that there was much hidden grain and maize in the country, every man became a food-hunter. Whole villages were pulled down in the search for secret places in their walls or under their floors. Parties scoured every ravine or hillside where caves might lurk. ”

“ In a season of scarcity the least resolute would draw upon their hoards, and, by enhancing the price of provisions, would compel others to do the same. And, though this would tend to equalize the supply of food through a series of years, it would only have the tendency, without fully producing the effect. ”

“ Among those who, from the hovels in which they live, and the herbs and roots which constitute their diet, are mistaken by travellers for proofs and specimens of general indigence, there are numbers who have hoards in leathern bags, consisting of sums in five-franc pieces, which they keep by them perhaps for a whole generation, unless brought out to be expended in their most cherished gratification—the purchase of land. ”

“ We know what is just and we will correct the mistakes of the departed. We know that this hoarding in families is unjust to the republic and198 unjust to the Brotherhood of Humanity,—an injury to all, a benefit to none. ”

“ Between hiding and hoarding there is only a difference of degree. The first is forced upon the villager, for public opinion is too many for him; he dare not let it be known that he has anything to put by. ”

“ Hoardings and scaffoldings are now so scientifically erected as to be little or no inconvenience to foot-passengers. Care must, however, be taken to see that in the erection of a hoarding the doors or gates in it shall not open outwards, and the police should be instructed to prevent carts being backed in and left standing across the footpath.
The surveyor must exercise great discretion in the length of time he allows a hoarding to remain; without undue hardship on the builder, he must study at the same time the more important question of the public convenience. ”

“ They hoarded nuts and acorns, and hips and haws, and then they wasted them; and they hoarded other things merely from the greed of getting, and with no possible expectation of advantage. It might be well enough to catch bees in hollyhocks, and imprison them in underground cells with flowers for them to make honey from; but why accumulate fire-flies and even dor-bugs in small brick pens? Why heap together mussel-shells; and what did a boy expect to do with all the marbles he won? You could trade marbles for tops, but they were not money, like pins ”