PINS THAT PRESERVED A MAN’S REASON.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2217, 26 April 1880, Page 3

PINS THAT PRESERVED A MAN’S REASON.

In the show window of one of the loading jewellers of ATeuna is exposed to view a brooch, magnificently studded with gems, in the middle of whose chasing is enclosed 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 Lavetskofky was arrested at Warsaw for an alleged insult to the Russian Government. The real author of the insult which'consisted of some careless words spoken at a social gathering, Avas his Avife. He accepted the accusation, however, and was sent to prison. In one of the lightless dungeons in which the Czar is so fond of confining his Polish subjects the unfortunate martyr, for his Avifo’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, perhaps after hours and clays, ho scattered them again, and so the game Avont on for six Aveary 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 exdlc Avas brought to me, the gaoler found me on my knees hunting for one which had escaped me for two clays. They saved my Avife’s husband from lunacy. My wife, therefore, could not desire a prouder ornament.”