THE SOUL OF NICHOLAS SNYDERS, OR THE MISER OF ZANDAM
By JEROME K. JEROME


THE SOUL OF NICHOLAS SNYDERS, OR THE MISER OF ZANDAM

Once upon a time in Zandam, which is by the Zuider Zee, there lived a
wicked man named Nicholas Snyders. He was mean and hard and cruel,
and loved but one thing in the world, and that was gold. And even
that not for its own sake. He loved the power gold gave him--the
power to tyrannize and to oppress, the power to cause suffering at his
will. They said he had no soul, but there they were wrong. All men
own--or, to speak more correctly, are owned by--a soul; and the soul
of Nicholas Snyders was an evil soul. He lived in the old windmill
which still is standing on the quay, with only little Christina to
wait upon him and keep house for him. Christina was an orphan whose
parents had died in debt. Nicholas, to Christina's everlasting
gratitude, had cleared their memory--it cost but a few hundred
florins--in consideration that Christina should work for him without
wages. Christina formed his entire household, and only one willing
visitor ever darkened his door, the widow Toelast. Dame Toelast was
rich and almost as great a miser as Nicholas himself. "Why should not
we two marry?" Nicholas had once croaked to the widow Toelast.
"Together we should be masters of all Zandam." Dame Toelast had
answered with a cackling laugh; but Nicholas was never in haste.

One afternoon Nicholas Snyders sat alone at his desk in the centre of
the great semi-circular room that took up half the ground floor of the
windmill, and that served him for an office, and there came a knocking
at the outer door.