A CHEQUERED CAREER.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1159, 16 May 1884, Page 4

A CHEQUERED CAREER.

{Melbourne Argus ) ■ ~Many of the old colonials who were frequenters of the Criterion Hotel, in Collins street west, and who remember the magical rapidity with which it ■was Wilt, will also recall to mind its first landlord. He was a Prussia., by birth,: but had been educated in England, and emigrated to Amerca, from * whence-he was allured to Australia by the discovery of the goldfields. Upon a site originally purchased bathe price of a horse and dray, Samuel Moss, or Salmi Morse, as he called himself in later years, erected an hotel which was famous in the fifties. Itshall was the icene ot vice-regal festivities, and also of Fourth of July cele* brations, wh -n G. F. Train used to indulge in spread-eagleism, and the quaint oratory of Consul Tarleton was: greatly relished. The bridal chamber

was also one of the sights of the city, and everybody in those days used to •be “ called to the bar” of the Criterion

who had business iu that part of Mel-

bourne Moss made a fortune, and sank some of it iu building what is now the convent at A bbotsford. Returning to the United States, he married a wife in San Francisco, and took a farm in Mendqncino County, where he resided from 1859 to 1865J He sepai-ated from his wife, and she

is now keeping a small shop in that city. He was afterwards heard of in •San Domingo, and about four years ago he turned up in .New York, with a version of the Passion Play, which had been performed with some success in San Francisco. He obtained from

Mr Abbey a promise to produce it at Booth’s Theatre, but the proposition was so strongly condemned by the press and in the pulpit, that the idea had to be abandoned. Moss then leased -a church, and converted it into a theatre, but the mayor refused to license it, and Moss, who had invested -ail the money he possessed, and as much as he could borrow from other people, in the undertaking, was ruined. Then he wrote something which he called a comedy, entitled “ A bustle ■among the Petticoats,” which proved a dismal failure. Then he seems to -have formed an attachment for an acl-

rcss, a Miss Blackburn, and the Cosmopolitan Tinatin was taken. Here he produced a drama under the title of “On the Yellowstone.” This also shared the fate of its predecessor, and the ex landloi-d of the Criterion found himself at the age of 58, in straitened

circumstances, and somewhnt unhinged in his mind. After spending the evening of February 23 at the house of Miss Blackburn he left it shortly after midnight and on the following morning bis body was found floating on the surface of the North .River, with string suspicions, as our New York correspondent asserts, that he was the victim of foul play.