LORD WOLSELEY'S LUCKY PURCHASE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 431, 17 January 1912, Page 2

LORD WOLSELEY'S LUCKY PURCHASE.

Lord Wolseley tells how he probably owes his life to a coat purchased by accident of a passing sailor in the Crimea. As yet unknown to fame, he was plodding through the mud dressed in his summer uniform and shivering in the chilling wind. Just then the figure of a sailor hove in sight. As Jack came up, swinging easily along, Wolseley was attracted by the comfortable look of his full winter suit, which he had evidently just picked up somewhere and put on all at once. Besides the fur cap and muffler, the output included a large rough pea jacket, double-breasted and big-but-toned, and a pair of long-legged hoots.

"Well, Jack," said the soldier, "that's a good coat you have on. Do you know where a man could get another like it ?" The sailor looked at the coat complacently, • and delivered himself of the opinion that there was not another like it from Constantinople tc Cronstadt. "Would he sell it ?" "Yes, he would." "The price ?"

"Six pound ten shillings." The coat changed backs at once. The sailor seemed pleased, and the soldier asked for the boots also.

Another six pounds ten, and these, too, changed hands, or, to speak somewhat more accurately, changed feet.

Thanks to this fortunate purchase, the young soldier survived the winter, which carried off many of his comrades, and rose rapidly from one rank to another, till all the world had heard of him.