Free money is a good thing.

A few days ago I was picking up trash that people threw out their car window into my yard. One piece of trash I liked very much. It was a 10 dollar bill.

I was just reading something in the New York Times about somebody who had even better luck 50 years ago. Here it is:

Fifty years ago, I had just moved to New York from South Carolina to begin my first job at a publishing company. My income was negligible, and I could barely afford even the cheap hotel where I was staying.

Still, as I was walking through Herald Square, I couldn’t resist stopping to browse at a small used-book stall. I found a couple of “Saint” paperbacks by Leslie Charteris that I hadn’t read.

I paid a nickel for each of them, and started to read one that evening. When I got to the end of the first chapter, I found a $10 bill tucked inside.

A little further into the book, I found another one. I continued flipping through the book and ended up with five $10 bills. That covered my first week’s hotel bill.

— Carol Robinson