"THE AGONY COLUMN."

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 157, 8 March 1872, Page 5

"THE AGONY COLUMN."

Correspondents of country, papers get hold of some strange tales. A writer in the:' Cardiff Times'-''says Young gentlemen should beware of the : '.agony column' of the dailies, which likewise contains a great deal .of advertised despair of a less reputable kind. A little while ago, a gay young fellow, with more money than,wit,; .travelled on the Metropolitan line from Charing Cross to Notting Hill G-ate in a first-class carriage, his only companions- being a handsome young lady with her father, an elderly gentleman ot a half-pay general aspect. This respectable old personage asked a trivial question about the' rail way, and some conversation followed, the young lady taking, part to a slight extent. The travellers' parted politely, aud two days afterwards an advertisement appeared in the. 'agony column' i of the ' Times,' intimating that the young i lady had been so impressed with the ! young gentleman that life without him I promised to be a blank, existaneeaprofifciess I waste. Would he write ? Flattered by this declaration, he did write, and some correspondence followed, conducted by the young la dy. with a modesty. scarcely compatible with the agony advertisement. | Interviews followed the correspondence; I the young gentleman discovered that the [ father was a .retired captain of very humble means. Not choosing to incur matrimony on disadvantageous worldly terms, the charming lady managed to hint that such an inconvenient ceremony was not.at all necessary. Whereupon the confiding youth iriade handsome presents, and finally lent the old gentleman £IOO upon 'his personal security.' Since the day when j the £IOO was handed over he has seen | neither parent nor child. The love -affair was,, happily for him, interrupted by an I untoward circumstance : the 'father* was i arrested for embezzlement."