Long after Longworth had become a multimillionaire he took a savage, perhaps a malicious, delight in doing things which shocked all current conceptions of how a millionaire should act. To understand the intense scandal caused by what were considered his vagaries, it is only necessary to bear in mind the ultra-lofty position of a multimillionaire at a period when a man worth $250,000 was thought very rich. There were only a few millionaires in the United States, and still fewer multimillionaires. Longworth ranked next to John Jacob Astor. On one occasion a beggar called at Longworth's office and pointed eloquently at his gaping shoes. Longworth kicked off one of his own untied shoes and told the beggar to try it on. It fitted. Its mate followed. Then after the beggar left, Longworth sent a boy to the nearest shoe store, with instructions to get a pair of shoes, but in no circumstances to pay more than a dollar and a half.
This remarkable man lived to the age of eighty-one; when he died in 1863 in a splendid mansion which he had built in the heart of his vineyard, his estate was valued at $15,000,000. He was the largest landowner in Cincinnati, and one of the largest in the cities of the United States. The value of the land that he bequeathed has increased continuously; in the hands of his various descendants to-day it is many times more valuable than the huge fortune which he left. Cincinnati, with its population of 325,902,7 pays incessant tribute in the form of a vast rent roll to the scions of the man whose main occupation was to hold on to the land he had got for almost nothing. Unlike the founder of the fortune the present Longworth generation never strays from the set formulas of respectability; it has intermarried with other rich families: and Nicholas, a namesake and grandson of the original, and a representative in Congress, married in circumstances of great and lavish pomp a daughter of President Roosevelt, thus linking a large fortune, based upon vested interests, with the ruling executive of the day and strategically combining wealth with direct political power.