KINDLY ECCENTRICITY.

Clutha Leader, Volume III, Issue 139, 9 March 1877, Page 3

KINDLY ECCENTRICITY.

Romance in real life is not so scarce as might be thought. By an extraordinary turn ot fate, I yesterday found myself in the most singular house of mourning it was ever my lot to visit The survivors were principally cats, but there were also dogs and also guinea pigs and fowls and mice. In the humble coffin amid this curious zoological and ornithologocial collection there lay the remains of a woman, of some sixty years of age, who in early life was fair and handsome, and the lucky possessor of a fortune of some £25,1)00. The tale told me was this : — Crossed in love, as it is called, when about 23 years of age, she became reserved and taciturn, refused to see her relations, and to hold any communication with her former friends and acquaintances. Her wealth she seemed to resolve should never percolate by any chance into the circles in which she had been wont to move. Having set up her menagerie, which she renewed from time to time as deaths occurred, she hit upon this curious ;device for circulating the coin under her control. She would issue invitations to some twenty or thirty deserving people at a time, to whom she would exhibit her birds and animals, and then as they passed out she would give to this one a soverign, to that one two, and to another £5 note. Struggling tradesmen were her particular fancy ; and any one of these receiving a note from the " queer old lady" might throw off bis anxiety, for whatever his difficulties they were sure' to be relieved if only he once got within the walls of this curious establishment. lam sorry to say that this eccentric yet good-natured creature managed herself to outrun the constable several years before her death ; but her friends hearing of her position so managed to supply her with the necessaries of life as L not to wound her susceptibilities, and to save her from the death from which she had rescued so many others.-—London Correspondent.