A RIP VAN WINKLE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5281, 30 May 1928, Page 3

A RIP VAN WINKLE.

22 YEARS IN AN ATTIC.

A Yugoslav Rip Van Winkle has just been discovered in a Slovenian village not far from the Italian frontier (says, a correspondent of the “Observer”). Twenty-two years ago one • Frania Kreiner, a local squire, young, handsome, dashing, the delight /of drawing-rooms—so oil the old people of the. district say—suddenly disappeared. It was known that ihe jv.as hopelessly in love with a VJenesse beauty, and the rumour spread abroad to the effect that he had gone abroad to heal his la.cerated heart was easily accepted. His house stood desertel, and the roof began to sag and the plaster fall away from the walls ; and at last one of the inheritors of the property has thought it high time to establish Kreiner’s death and salvage what is left of the house.

Howe.ver, when the police went tfl the house they■found in. one of the attics Kreiner himself, tin old man with a flowing white beard. He had spent twenty-two years shut in that room, living on bread that a very old servant brought him. Natura.lly, Jhis sanity w.as questioned, but the commission which has just examined him gives the opinion that, although ihe, is eccentric, he is sound in. mind., His hermit life has been due to the effect of disappointed love. Kreiner’s isolation has been complete. He had scarcely any notion of a motor-car (they ha.d hardly penetrated to his district in 1904), and none whatever of flying; still thought the capital, of his country was Vienna, and was astonished to hear that the Emperor Franz Jospeh. was dead. The uniforms; of the Yugoslav gendiarmery officials .and the clothes-of the doctors who examined him he. is said to have found exceedingly amusing. Perhaps because this amusement has. given him a new zest in life, he, now declares that his hermit days are over. Presumably his heart has been cured by twenty-two years’ isolation ; but since the slight change in men’s clothing proves really exhilarating to him, care 'has so far been taken to preserve him from a view of modern female fashion. He left the world, it must be remembered, when waists were high, skirts were long, and sleeves; as big .as Zeppelins. He has heard nothing of the Great War, and treats his automatic change of nationality with true ascetic scorn.