HEIRESS' FLIGHT

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 348, 26 March 1910, Page 10

HEIRESS' FLIGHT

In a humble Chicago boarding-house the de'noument was reached of the extra, ordinary elopement of the pretty seven-teen-year-old girl, the granddaughter of a well-known Phildelphia millionaire, with a middle-aged waiter. The heiress, whose strange 'disappearance kept an army of detectives scouring the country for nearly fcwo weeks, was iound in a disheTilled condition living under an assumed named with the waiter, who passed for her father. The couple had been traced to Boston, Halifax and Montreal, and then, after travelling backwards and forwards for upwards of 3000 miles, they were run to earth in Chicago, where their resources were utterly exhausted, the girl selling her jewels. She was preparing to commit suicide. "I'm so glad it's all over, and I can go home," she explained pathetically to the detectives. "I don't want to commit suicide any longer. I'm quite willing Ho go to school." She declared that she alone was resopnsible for the elopement. "After mother died," she explained, "I ielt so miserable that when grandfather adopted me and I heard I should be sent to a boarding 'school suicide seemed my only refuge. I used to tell my sorrws to the man who waited on us in our private apartments at an hotel in Philadelphia. He was so kind that finally, against his will, I persuaded him to take me away. He has behaved to me ever since like a father." In the lodging-house were discovered acoresof love-letters exchanged between the heiress and the waiter. Most of the girl's letters had evidently reached the waiter hidden between plates. One began, "My dear sweetheart papa, from your sweetheart daughter." Some were in. verse. "You're my king, waiter man; I'm your bashful little girl!" ran one of the missives. The waiter is now under arrest, charged with abduction. His wife ,who with his two children lives at Philadelphia. announced a few days ago her intention of suing the heiress for £IO,OOO damages on°the ground of alienation of her husband's affections. From her appearance the heiress would not be judged to be more than fifteen years of age, but she is curiously precocious. Like other wealthy young American girls, she seems, amid trie the luxury' of her upbringing, to have suffered from "ennui, and to have been willing to do anything to bring excitement into her life. "Because one has millions of dollars locked up in a safety vault," she exclaimed, "is no reason why one should be happy. I was intensely bored by the presence of so many servants and the iormality of ray surroundings. I endured cheerfully all the hardships oi my travels with the waiter—who treated me as a father would—because I felt they would be sure to result in grand father allowing me to do as other gjrls ! do. I "A woman handed me a Bible with " I page turned down at the story of the i Creation. There I read that everv living thing was given a mate. There | would be happiness if parents would al 1 low their children to pick their mates I in life without eternally trying to die tate to them."