Romance of a Ring.

Manawatu Herald, 31 January 1899, Page 3

Romance of a Ring.

♦ "Many years ago, when at Oxford," writes an Englishman to the London Spectator, " my father gave me as a heirloom a ring presented to him by an old friend, and bearing an inscription stating that- it contained hair from the head of the Duke of Wellington. Tbe ring I gave to my wife on our marriage in 1876. In October 1879 when we were visiting W. Arkwright of Sutton, Scarsdale, my wife felt the ring slip off her finger at tbe dinner table, and although a careful search followed, nothing more was seen or heard of it until eighteen years later. At the commencement of this year, however, my wife received a letter from her half sister in New Zealand, in wbich it was stated incidentally that a church in which she was interested had reoeived unexpected help several years ago from a peculiar rource. Her sister had sent from England, at her request, gloves purchased at Bides, and on trying a pair on she, to her astonishment, found inside of one a ring containing the hair of the Duke of Wellington, which I ad evidently been drawn off the finger unconsciously by somebody trying on the glove. Unable to find tbe owner of tbe ring and not desiring to keep it Mrs Hodge thought it would be fair to sell it and to add the proceeds to the church fund. She did so, and the purchaser was a Frank Arkwright of Overton, Marton, New Zaaland, whose grandmother had given the ring to my father, who has returned it to me.