ENCH STORY OF A SCOTTISH PEER.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1929, 10 March 1875, Page 3

ENCH STORY OF A SCOTTISH PEER.

The Paris Figaro has some wonderful contributors. They boldly state as fact« what can be nothing but the pure invention of their ingenious brains. The frequent executions that have lately taken place in France may have had something to do with the singular experiences of M. Gaston Vassy, and turned his head. He writes that he once had a friend, a Scqtch- ' man, affected with the inevitable British malady, the spleen. It does not appear . what induced this painful complaint! * Possibly, the cause was his being th?; owner of & name that parried with it ari; aristocratic aroma, or that recalled gallant deeds performed by doughty ancestors. Be this as it may, Lord Sohtrey conceived an intense dislike to life, and an ardent desire to put an end to it by perishing on the scaffold. Being an honourable man, and unwilling to put France, his adopted country, to unnecessary expense merely to gratify his own personal ambition, he nobly refrained from committing- such a crime, or crimes, as would ensure him the polite attentions of SEonsieur de Paris, provided he escaped the hardships of extenuating circumstances. So- he determined on having a private instrument of his own, arranged in so ingenious a manner, that he himself could be at the same time patient and executioner. He therefore erected in kis drawing-room such a model of/a guillotine as only a nillionaire could offer himself. The two uprights were made of ebony, richly inlaid with; copies of the lethal blade executed in gold arid silver. The fatal plank, to which the victim has to be attached, was of cedar wood carved in open work, and was; as coquettish a bit of manufacture as a lady's; fkn. The knife was of embossed steel, heavily weighted tft the top, to make certain of its sure and speedy effect. Lord Sohtrey was six months construe!;-, ing tnig pretty toy; when it was finished he had it placed opposite a large lookingglassywith a view to passing, as far as time permitted, his last moments in this worlcf in congenial society. After havings frequently tested the spring to see that the knife played properly in the grooves, his lordship made his will, retired to a neighbouring barber's to have his toilette made* returned to his home* put on a white silk shirt, placed his head in the lunette, arid after having had a farewell glance at himself in the looking-glass, pressed the spring, I and—--—. He was • found next morning quietly asleep in bed, and cured of his spleen. The spring had refused to act, arid with an excusable disgust, his lordship had removed his head from its perilous position and gone to bed. He has since presented the guillotine to the museum at Glasgow, though we cannot state from out own personal knowledge that it is there.—Globe.