LONG-LOST SON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 October 1938, Page 4

LONG-LOST SON

REUNION WITH AGED MOTHER. FORTUNE TELLER’S ADVICE. After a fortune-teller had advised that he should return to his home, Mr Billy Jones, a native of Aberystwyth, Wales, who has lived in America for 34 years, lately ‘arrived at his home town unannounced. He found his mother, at 92, living in the same house where he left her in 1904. In the 34 years of his absence neither had any word of the other. Both thought the other was dead, and both were overjoyed when they met again. When he arrived in Aberystwyth, Mr Jones, who is 60, went first to a local hotel. He was told that his mother, Mrs W. Jones, was still living in Crynfryn Buildings. He hurried to the house which he knew so well as a boy, only to find himself treated as a stranger, the mother refusing to believe he was her son “returned' from the dead.” When he sang an old Welsh hymntune she had taught him as a boy, however, his mother 1 was overcome and wept with joy. Relatives in the town were told of “Billy’s” return and they all joined in the welcome. To a newspaper representative Mr Jones explained that he received none of the letters sent by his family because for the first few years of his stay in America he travelled from State to State. “I am a naturalised American now,” he went on, “and have my job in a Minnesota steelworks. My life is in America with my wife and family. Things are pretty bad there, but I.prefer America now. I cannot see much change in Aberystwyth.” Then he told of his daughter’s visit to a fortune-teller. “The fortune-teller advised her to tell me to return to my home-town, where I would hear good news,” he declared. “I have ‘seen’ good news.”