LOVE AND MADNESS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3730, 29 June 1883, Page 4

LOVE AND MADNESS.

A most affecting anecdote is related by Dr Unwins in his " Treatise on the Diseases of tho Brain." A lady on the point of marriage, whose intended husband usually travelled by the stage coach to visit her, went one day to meet him, and found, instead of him, an old friend, who came to announce to her the tidings of her sudden death. She uttered a scream, and piteously exclaimed " He is dead !" but then all consciousness of the affliction that had befallen her ceased. " From that fatal moment," says tho author, " lias this unfortunate female daily, for fifty years, in all seasons, traversed the distance of a few miles to the spot where she expected her future husband to alight from the coach ; and every day she utters, in a plaintive tone, '' Ho is not come yet! I will return to-morrow." There is a more remarkable case, in which love, after it had been apparently extinct, produced a like effect upon being accidentally revived. It is recorded in a Glasgow newspaper. An old man residing in the neighborhood of that city, found a miniature of his wife, taken in hor youth. She had been dead many years, and he was a person of strictly sedate and religious habits; but the., sight of this picture ontirely overcame him. From the time of its discovery till his death, which took place some months afterward, he neglected all bis

ordinary duties and employments, and became in a manner imbecile, spending whole days without uttering a single word or manifesting the slightest interest in passing , occurrences. The only one with whom he would hold any communication was a little grandchild who very sitrikingly resembled the portrait. To hor he was very docile, and a day or two before his death he gave her his purse, and strictly enjoined her to lay the picture beside him in his coffin, a request which was accordingly fulfilled.