SLEEPY LOVERS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10029, 1 July 1910, Page 3

SLEEPY LOVERS.

BOOK PREFERRED TO SWEETHEART'S SOCIETY.

Edward Oughroan, of Redclifle road, South Kensingtoi, a young man who, it was declared, used to go to sleep when he called on his sweetheart, was at London Sheriff's Court ordered to pay £2OO damages to Miss Ellen Jane Frost, of Tonsley Hill, Wandawurth, for breach of promise of marriage. Mr R. F. Colain, counsel for plaintiff, said the defendant's fatner was a man of property. The parties became engaged in June, 1903, but it w as not until 1907 that the defendant began to show a disinclination for Miss Frost's society. When he visited her father's house he would get a book and lie on the so "a all the evening, taking no notice of anyone. If they went out together the defendant put his fiancee in an omnibus at twelve o'clock on a foggy night and left her to get home as best she could. Obviously he was trying to shake her off. In one letter which the plaintiff the defendant she said—"l have been thinking it would be better if we did not see each other for a few months, for it is no pleasure to have you here just to go to sleep, nor is it any pleasure to go out with you knowing you begrudge every panny you spend on me." The plaintiff, a tall, fair girl, said in the witness-box that she first met the defendant in January, 1900, when she was twenty-one years old. On one occasion he took her to the 'Zoo." They out from ten in the morning tiirtive in the evening, and during all that time she had nothing to eat. When he came to her house he would either read or go to sleep. He would not see her home when they were out together in the evening. Mr H. P. I. Warburton, counsel for the defendant, said the action was one brought by an extremely bufliness-like woman, who could not have suffered much in her feelings. Except that he was a bit sleepy and did not talk as much as he might have done, there was nothing against the defendant's conduct. It was a case of a man who was poor, who did not see his way to set up a home, and realised that the engagemeont was a mistake. The jury assessed the damages as stated above.