Waterbury Evening Democrat

BULLS OF DEAD BANKS.
The Profitless Hobby of a Careful Connecticut Man.

One of the very oddest characters in this state (which is said to contain over 400,000 adults above the average intelligence) has just died at Millington, near East Haddam. His name was Henry Bulkeley, 73 years old, and a life long resident of Millington. He was a bachelor, and a man of eccentric habits, and but few outside of his immediate neighborhood were aware of his existence.

Mr Bulkeley was rarely seen further from his home than to visit the town hall on election days, and then only as a silent spectator. At all seasons when seen he was inevitably clad in a faded blue jean "jumper" and overalls, and at all times he wore a white handkerchief tied on the top of his head and reaching under his chin. He was a Ben Harrison man.

Since Mr Bulkeley's death it has been learned that he had a hobby. And that hobby was the hoarding up the bills of defunct banks. He was always an industrious man, and probably had wrought faithfully upon his rocky little farm from the time he was old enough for his hands to encircle a hoe handle. In this long period he had accumulated a sum which, if converted into current funds, would amount to a respectable little fortune. But just how much his estate is worth the administrator will, judging from reports, have to figure out from assets made up, in part at least, of bills from banks long since defunct.

Not long ago one of his neighbors called upon him for a loan of $25. Although the old man did not seem desirous of having his visitor enter his cot, yet he was willing to advance the money, and he produced the desired amount in nice clean bills of the old East Haddam bank, a corporation which went out of existence a quarter of a century ago. Of course the bills were worthless, but their possessor, it is said, did not know the difference, and seemed to take as much delight in handling and caressing them as though they were crisp gold certificates.