He had lost everything in a fire that occurred at the last boarding house he had stayed. Leon Davis had moved into another boarding house with everything he owned in a valise. His room and board was to be paid every two weeks, which were fifty coins. After one month, Leon was out of coins and didn’t have his rent.

Now, the landlady, Marie Ferguson, didn’t want to just evict him without giving him a chance to come up with the money. She suggested that Leon sell some of his things that he had moved in with while looking for some type of work.

So, Leon place posters around town saying all he had for sale. People come from all over to purchase what Leon had and when Marie came for the rent after a week, Leon still didn’t have all the money. “What happened to the money you received for the stuff you sold?”

“Well, everyone who came was people I owed money to, and they each took something for what I owed them.”

After hearing that and knowing that Leon still hadn’t found a job and there were people coming everyday looking for a room with a month’s rent in advance, Marie told Leon that he had to go. She really didn’t want to put him out, but she had no other choice.

After Leon left, Marie went to the room to clean it for the next tenants and in the middle of the floor was Leon’s valise that he had moved kin with, so Marie bent down to pick it up and it was so heavy to be an empty valise. All she could do was lay it on its side to open it up to see what was in it. When she did, she was astonished to see that there was nothing in it. It was empty! Marie didn’t understand what made the valise so heavy, so she just closed it back up and had someone come and drag it to the storage closet at the end of the hallway.

What Marie didn’t know was that when Leon came to stay at the boarding house five weeks before, he moved in with everything he owned in that valise. Now that all the tangible items were gone, it still held all he owned, which was ‘Nothing’!