AMERICA'S GOOD FAIRY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10041, 11 May 1910, Page 4

AMERICA'S GOOD FAIRY.

Mrs Russell Sage, widow of the American millionaire, who has been deploring the number of begging letters she receives, is one of the richest women in the world. Her vast fortune, however, is rapidly dwindling, for she is giving thousands away to deserving charities, and the number of requests for help that she receives are over 900 a day. "I really do not know how much money I have distributed," she said some time ago; and her munificence has earned for her the nickname of "America's good fairy." It is curious to reflect that when she first married Mr Sage, the millionairess and her husband were quite poor. "We were not poverty-stricken," she says, ''but just able to keep the wolf from the door." . Mrs Sage is frequently unconventional in her charity, and she is never so bappy as when helping the poor in an out-of-the-way manner. For instance, on one occasion she sent a magnificent engineering outfit to a released convict in order to helpjhim to start a new life. Another time sha took a ragged tramp in her own motor-car, and gave him a good meal at her own house, and once she bought up all the ice-cream she could find in the town in order to treat a crowd of poor children.Mrs Sage's pet aversion is tobacco. Her hatred of the weed is so great that some time ago she resigned from the Society of Mayflower Descendants because the men smoked at the annual banquet in spite of her angry protests.