A PEDLAR’S ROMANCE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1234, 2 September 1884, Page 3

A PEDLAR’S ROMANCE.

The famous deaf-and-dumb nicknack pedlar who, during the past fourteen years, attracted so much attention bn London Bridge, is dead, and the subject of the latest sensation. He died in the Southwark Workshop, near the south end of the bridge. Despite his infirmities, he managed to support himself by his small sales, and securing official and police favor by the gentleness of his demeanour and the intelligence of bis conduct, he was allowed to occupy the same post on the great thoroughfare from year to year. Before his death, the pedlar beckoned to his cot one of the hospital attendants, aud terrified him by speaking to him. When the attendant recovered from his astonishment, the beggar confessed that his deafness and dumbness bad been feigned. He said he was a Swiss gentleman of fortune, and belonged to one of the best families in the republic. When a young man, he was betrothed to a beautiful and accomplished girl. He was possessed of a most violent temper, and in a lover’s quarrel one day or tv a trifle, he so wounded the girl with the bitterness of his invective that she fell ill. The reproaches of his friends for His cruel conduct stung him so that|he became melancholy from remorse, and left home. He then resolved to punish himself. - He vowed to become a voluntary exile for twenty years, to earn his own living, leave his fortune untouched, keep his friends and relatives ignorant as to bis whereabouts, and to go bareheaded and barefooted in all weathers during the entire time, and to listen to no one and speak to no human being during the last ten -years of his exile. If he lived to complete his vow he meant to return home, and use his fortune and the remainder of his days in making his betrothed happy, providing she were still alive and unmarried. He had rigidly kept his vow. “ But,” he cried before he expired, “my time is not quite up, and I must die before it is. I have been punished as 1 deserved.” Investigation, so far as it has gone, has proved that the pedlar’s story is entirely true, and his family in Switzerland have been made acquainted with his death.