A DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1179, 19 October 1882, Page 2

A DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

A FAMILY living on King-street hud u domestic that was continually tasting of everything. The lady of the house had some bottled beer, aud occasionally she would open a bottle and drink a wineglassful, and cork the bottle tight for another time. When she came to try the beer again, it would be gone. She tried every way to find out what became of the beer. The girl said she had noticed the cat down the cellar a many times, and very likely the cat might drink it. After a number of bottles had disappeared the lady swore vengeance on that cat. She made up her mind she would teach that cat a lesson that would make her sick of beer. So she caused her bald-headed husband to get at the drug store a piece of ipecac., and after opening a bottle of beer she poured the drug into the beer bottle, with about a pint of beer. You might think it wrong to spoil good beer that way, but the lady wanted to make the cat sick. The trap had been set about an hour, when the lady heard a noise as of loud conversation in the kitchen. She listened and heard the following con versution :— “ (), Lord — ye-o-o-p — have mercy—yo-o-p ! O, I am ye-h-o-op* poisoned • —yn-i-c k I” The lady opened the Hoor,

pecting to see the cat sick, but what was her astonishment to see a hired girl as big as a prize ox lying on the floor, with one leg over the wood-box and the other under the stove, her head rolled up in a piece of carpet, heaving up Jonah as though she had been trying to learn to smoke. The kind lady, the pretty good Samaritan, asked her how long she had been that way, and she said she did’t touch that bottle at all. The lady told her she would feel better when she got over it, and left her, and when she did get over it she looked as though she had been to a picnic. The cat was just as well and hearty as ever it was in its life, and the girl is not at that house any more, not much.