In fifty years he made a fortune of from thirty to forty million dollars.

He was nominated as Secretary of the Treasury in 1869, but it was found that the law forbids a merchant to occupy that position.

He offered to resign, or to give the entire profits of his business to the poor of New York as long as he should remain in office.

President Grant declined to accept such an offer.
Poor Kepler struggled with constant anxieties, and told fortunes by astrology for a livelihood, saying that astrology as the daughter of astronomy ought to keep her mother; but fancy a man of science wasting precious time over horoscopes.

"I supplicate you," he writes to Moestlin, "if there is a situation vacant at Tuebingen, do what you can to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread and wine and other necessaries of life, for my wife is not accustomed to live on beans." He had to accept all sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and served anyone who would pay him.
Who could have predicted that the modest, gentle boy, Raphael, without either riches or noted family, would have worked his way to such renown, or that one of his pictures, but sixty-six and three-quarter inches square (the Mother of Jesus), would be sold to the Empress of Russia, for $66,000?
His Ansedei Madonna, was bought by the National Gallery for $350,000.