A TRUE ROMANCE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 97, 30 March 1916, Page 2

A TRUE ROMANCE.

1 A NEWSPAPER MATRIMONIAL VENTURE. (From the Sydney Daily' Telegraph). "Somewhere in New South Wales" are three people whose whole outlook on life was Charged almost in a iiasli of time hy the innocent publication in "The Daily Telegraph" of a paragraph _a soldier/his wife, and their child. The story is almost unbelievably amazing. And just as it is not intended to mention where somewhere is, so in the recital of fact to come no mention will be made of names. Some time ago a representative of this psper was instructed to accompany several of the route marches that were then rolling citywards as evidence of the country's belief in the effect of them as recruiting agencies. He met- many men, and among them soldier whom tins story concerns fa warrior of experience, squat, broadshouldered, good-humored; yet for some' reason since explained a tactiturn man as far as matters relating to himself were concerned except that his tales cf past actions were always entertaining and bright. In such moments he gave the impression of a man who bad "a history" that was distastefully ever-present in "his and that he welcomed the chance to become voluble and to lose himself in discourse of wars that had Then he wore the dungarees of the march-

The other day the newspaper man was visited in his 'office by this same soldier, now in khaki, and about, as lie put it, to go back to his country camp after having spent half a dozen of the happiest days of his life. He was fit, clear-eyed, and clean-limbed, and with the added gaiety of one from whoso shoulders a burden of a lifetime h-i dropped. And a.little girl was with him.

He desired to make the newspaper 7Up.li p. present. What for? Here is tin story he told:— » •'Remember that letter I wrote you —that private letter', from which you used a line or two? Well, for that. Yop see, many years ago T went the j^te—;l drank-—and I didn't wake up till I found I had been divorced. When I woke up I settled clown to live it down. I went out back, and I succeeded, I think. There was something in. that piece you published that was seen by my wife; she saw my views had changed and we were married again." He stopped, and, after a pause—- " Besides, there's the kiddie, too; J haven't seen her since she was a few months old!" And then he went off to catch his train, a man who is not going to the front in a spirit of adventure, as was his first impulse, but with the fixed determination to win his way up. As he wont out the door he said laughingly: "Fancy, the old 'D.T.' as a matrimonial agency."