"FREE AND FAITHFUL, STRONG AS DEATH."

Waikato Times, Volume XV, Issue 1323, 21 December 1880, Page 2

"FREE AND FAITHFUL, STRONG AS DEATH."

A Rake example of constancy, courage, and devotion combined has just been furnished by a brave youug peasant woman, born and bred in a remote hamlet of the Vosgea, Marie Hagart. This heroine in humble life, bade adieu to her husband some mouths since, and saw him start for the great city of Paris in the hope of obtaining employment there. But almost upon his arrival in the capital he fell ill, and being without either funds or friends was taken to the Hospital de la Fitie. The news of his illness reached the hamlet where his wife lived in course of time, and the latter, listening only to the promptings of her heart, determined to join her sick husband at once. She was utterly destitute. To travel by rail was, therefore, put of question ; so she started on foot with a baby in her arms, just two francs in her pocket, and a journey of a hundred and three leagues before her. Braving hardships of every discription, sleeping by the roadside or in the fields, and living on what scraps of food she could obtain on the way, she pressed onward nothing daunted for the city where her husband lay sick. She had lost her way several times, her clothing was in rags, her shoes were gone, but her courage remained uudiminished, until a few evenings asro, when, footsore and weary, she found herself at Charentin, when she sunk down in the streets overcome by her Bufferings, exhausted from want of food, exclaiming faintly, " Mon Dieu, I can go no further." Mother and child were conveyed to the police station, revived, warmed, and tended, after whioh the poor woman related iv a few simple words her touching story, seemingly astonished that those who listened to her should have been moved to express admiration for her conduct. Kindly persons offered the young woman the assistance and shelter her forlorn position required, but her absorbing thought was to obtain news of the man for whom she had travelled so far. The police commissary undertook to satisfy her on this point, and a few hours later she learnt that he whom she had walked so many leagues to see had expired in the hospital ward twenty-four hours before her arrival. — Standard.

The new railway up Mount Vesuvius is described as running along a road as steep as a ladder, half a mile in length. It is not a train in which tho passenger travels, but a single carriage, carrying ten persons only, and as the ascending starts another, counterbalancing it> comes down from the summit, the. weight of *agh being five toue.