A REMARKABLE MISTAKE.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 3, Issue 224, 10 September 1878, Page 3

A REMARKABLE MISTAKE.

A correspondent, writing from a French watering place says: A very singular blunder was committed the other day by the officials of a railway station between Perpignan and Toulon. A gentleman •who had been spending the winter here with his family, left last week for Marseilles, taking with him the body of his mother-in-law, who died six weeks ago, and who had expressed a wish to be buried in the family vault at Marseilles. When he reached Marseilles and went with the Commissioner of Police—whose presence is required upon these occasions, to receive the body from the railway officials, he noticed to his great surprise that the coffin was of a different shape and construction from that which he had taken away from here. It turned out upon further inquiry that a mistake had been committed by the officials who had sent on to Toulon the coffin containing his mother-in-law's body, believing that it held the remains of a deceased Admiral, which were to be embarked for interment in Algeria, while the coffin awaiting delivery was the one that should have been sent on. The gentleman who was placed in this awkward predicament having requested the railway officials to communicate at once with Toulon by telegraph, proceeded thither himself with the coffin of the Admiral, but the intimation had arrived too late as he ascertained when he got there • that the coffin had been duly received, taken on board amid, " the thunder of fort and of fleet," the State vessel which was waiting for it, and despatched to Algeria. He at once called upon the maritime Prefect of Toulon and explained the circumstances of the case, but though a despatch-boat was sent in pursuit, the other vessel was not overtaken. He is now at Toulon waiting her return, and I believe that he declines to give up the coffiin containing the deceased Admiral until he regains possession of his mother-in-law's remains.— Charleston Herald.