TITLE-WORSHIPPERS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1862, 23 September 1913, Page 10

TITLE-WORSHIPPERS.

BELGIAN COUNT'S QUEST FOR AMERICAN HEIRESS.

In a drastic verdict satirising the "title-worshipping proclivities" of American women, Judge Cohalan, of tho Supreme Court, New York, granted probate of tho will of. Countess Gaston Darschqtj nee Wilhclmina Detwold, a native ot Now York, who ignored tho majority of her American relatives, and divided her fortune of £80,000 between her husband's nephew, Count Guillaumo Darschut, and her own nephew and niece. .

The American relatives arc stated by the "Daily .Mail's" correspondent to liavo contested tlio will on the ground that Count Darschot of Belgium had conspired with the nephew of the lato countess, Mr. Joseph Lentilhon, for the purpose of fraudulently influencing the countess in making her will. They based their protest on some 200 letters addressed to his American aunt by Count Darschot, in which ho confessed his desire to marry only money) and his inability to find an American heiress, and observed, "In tlio. United States there i 3 nothing' to be done then? Let time bring a golden baboon who is nice." The count eventually married, against tho wishes of hia aunt, a daughter of Nubar Pasha, tlio Egyptian statesman, with a fortune of some £1.600,000. The Judge, in his verdict, declared that the count's letters wero "more like the fervid appeals of an infatuated lover than tlio lottorii of a young*mail to hia uncle's widow." Ho added that' they showed "manifest- insincerity that would have filled an ordinary American woman with disgust." Tho letters showed tlio count to bo "a typical European for-tunc-lninter desirous of bartering a title for money." . Tho Judge, however, decreed that the testatrix belonged to that "class of American women to whom a title of nobility is the great criterion of honour, virtue, and high social position." If, therefore, ■ she was pleased by the grossest and most extravagant flattery and adulation from tlio possessor of a title tho count could not bo said .to have exercised nndue influence "even if ho exhausted his ingenuity in playing upon the affections of a title-worship-ping woman."

The following sign was posted at the opening of to baseball season in the office of tlie Chicago Postmaster:—"Special Notice: All requests for leave of absence owing to funerals, weddings, lame back, house cleaning, sore throat, headache. indigestion, etc., must be handed in not later than 10 a.m. on tlio day of tl>" wmo." The waiters employed at the fashionable Cafe Heal in Barcelona, to avenge their dismissal, bribed a number of chim-