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Evening Star, Issue 3103, 29 January 1873, Page 3

Mr Coppin, of the Melbourne Theatre, recently received the following amusing letter from Mellt-r. The letter was dated October 29. and was written on board the Peninsular and Oriental steamer Travancore, on the voyage from Singap ire to Bombay “ Have you heard the last news ? I’ve just got letters from E. P. Mingston, in which he gives concise evidence of the fact that poor Heller died of cholera at sea, on his way home from China. In Ceylon it was all the talk, and a gentleman at the Langham Hotel, London, wrote to E. P. all the particulars. This g> ntlernan was one o c the passengers on the ship, so that I am afraid the report must be true. Poor Heller ! Well, I can’t tt 11 how much I arn interested in the sad news.* He was the nearest relative I ever had, and always treated me as if he could not do enough for either of us. From earliest infancy—earlier—he became intimately connected with my affairs, and in the UP» and downs of life he has always risen tyith pry ups, and done the best he could to keep aid jai; when the indications of position were contrariwise. He was a good fellow', take him 911 in all. He would take all he could get—no more ; therefore you can well understand how I loved him. He ate ipy bread, drank rpy soda and brandy, wore iuy clothes, spent my money when I had any, and when I hadn’t, he’d spend anybody elsels that was fool enough to let him. But it is all oyer now'. He’s gone. The trouble I am in personally on account of this matter J-tlps certified report—is something diffi cult to explain, for to the best of my belief I am as well and as lively as 1 ever was in my life—ia fact livelier. What does it mean ? I have asked everybody on the ship who I am. They all declare it’s me, I ask if I look like a wandering defunct? They say. No. One man in the second-class was kind enough to observe, that if I was as dead as reported, I was about the healthiest-looking old corpse he’d ever come across. Hence there is but one B'dutien of the mystery the report is not true ; it can’t be, and 1 won’t torture myself any further at present, but wait patiently for further proofs of his —of my— of somebody’s decease, which will doubtless be made, linowu to‘the world during the progrfess of the present century.”