PINS THAT PRESERVED A MAN'S REASON.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 91, 16 April 1880, Page 4

PINS THAT PRESERVED A MAN'S REASON.

In the show gwindov? of one of the ; leading jewellers of Vienna is exposed to view a brooch, magnificently studded with gems, in the middle cf whole chasing is inclosed the most singular of centres—- four common old bent and , corroded pins. The brooch is the property of the Countess Lavetskofky. The pins have a history, of course. Several years ago Count .Robert Savelskofky was arrested at Warsaw for an alleged iusult to the Eussian Gro vernment. The real author of the insult, which consisted of some careless words spoken at a social gathering, was his wife. 'He accepted the accusation, however, and was sent to prison. In one ofthe lightless dungeons in which the Czar is so fond of confining his Polish subjects the unfortunate, martyr, for his wife's loose tongue, spent six ' years. He had only one amusement. After he had been searched and thrown into a cell he had found in his coat four pins. These he pulled out and threw on the floor ; then in the darkness he hunted for them. Having found them, perhsp? after hours and days, he scattered them again, and so the game . went on for six weary years. " But for them," he writes in his memoirs, " I would-have gone mad. They provided me with a purpose. So long as I had them to search for I had something to do. "When the decree for my liberation as an exile was brought to me, the gaoler found me on my knees hunting ior one had escaped me for two days. They saved my wife's husband from lunacy. My wife, therefore, could nob desire a prouder ornament."