The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-11-14 00:00:00

157 165 110

QUEEN ISABELLA IN PARIS.

A SINGULAR ADVENTURE.

On the 211,1 September two of Lord Muncaster's
servants, one of them the butler, took a boat from
Port Ballantrae, Antrim, for an hour's sail. They
did not return, and inquiries being made it was learned
that a schooner had been seen to pick up a boat with
two men in it. At the end of a week a letter was re-
ceived from Derry, written by the captain of a
schooner, to say that he had picked up in the vicinity
of Rathlin, and out of great danger, a boat with two
men therein, who evidently knew little about the man-
' agement of oars. The captain on taking them on
board, had intended to carry them on with him to
Derry ; but the pleasure-seekers, on coming again
opposite Port Ballantrae, where the waters appeared to
be more quiet, insisted on being permitted to take
their oars as before, and endeavoured to reach the
home that was still visible through the twilight by the
shorter route ; they hail only to row about a mile of
water. The butler having with him the keys under
which were the good things of the castle, there was
nothing, he contended, short of his speedy return
would preserved its honoured inmates from the horror,
&c., of short allowance. The schooner went on her
way, no did the boat. The former reached Derry in
due course, but the latter was not seen there or at
Port Ballantrae ever after. Time passed. Lord Muss'
caster paid the owners of the boat for the loss of their
little craft ; but he and his family were so affected
over the melancholy fate of their two favourite ser-
vants—one of whom had been in his lordship's service
for ten years, and the other for eight—that they gave
up their occupancy of Seaport Lodge the following
week, though the terms of their engagement were
little more than half expired. The two men utterly
unable to force their way against the returning tidal
wave of the Atlantic, were carried out to sea, where,
some twenty miles from land, they were picked up by
an American vessel bound for Quebec. Thither they
were carried and landed after a five weeks' passage.
Thence they were sent to Liverpool by a Canadian
packet, and last week reached their own homes. One
of the men has a wife and family; and when he re-
turned, after his two months' absence, he found his
wife in deep mourning.

Mr. Charles Dickens, in answer to an appeal made
by Mr. Pope, collector of funds for the Printer's Almshouses,
writes :--" I beg to say I shall be happy to devote the gross
amount of my next reading in London to the fund. What
should I have been without printers? I am grateful, and
wish to show it." Toe object now sought lithe erection of a
new wing to the institution.
The wife of a farmer died suddenly, the other day,
In a dentist's shop in Leicester, while having a number of
teeth extracted under the influence of chloroform, which had
been administered by her own medical attendant.
It is stated that numerous Jewish families residing
in London and Lisbon, having wked if the Provisional Go-
vernment had abrogated the old laws which expelled them
from Spain, have received an athrmative answer.