A ROMANCE OF THE PARIS EXHIBITION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 196, 18 August 1900, Page 5 (Supplement)

A ROMANCE OF THE PARIS EXHIBITION.

WINE-DEALER FINDS HIS LOST WIFE,

There is a romantic 'story to the Paris correspondence of the "Daily Telegraph." It tells how a Bordeaux wine-dealer In search of his long-iost wife has discovered her under strange circumstances at the Exhibition. The deserted and disconsolate husband having come to town on a visit with, his little girl, aged five, was treating the latter ■to some of the World's Fair side stu/ws. Among other entertainments he took her, in spite of her tender years, to one of the booths at the Trocadero to see some figure-dancing by Eastern beauties, warranted^enuine Orientals. The child had been watching various stout ladles attired in flowing robes of printed calico gyrating and contorting themselves to the twanging of banjos and the jingling of tambourines when she suddenly exclaimed in a loud voice,- "Look, father, why, there's mamma." Father did look, and turned pale. At the same Instant one of the Oriental dancing women stopped suddenly short in her steps and ij

BURSTING INTO TEARS FLED OFF THE STAGE.

She was the Bordeaux wine-dealer's longlost wife, and the recognition had been mutual. The husband immediately went to the nearest police station and told the story of his wife's disappearance some years previously in the company of a lover and With the conjugal savings amounting to £30, and how he had just found her metamorphosed Into an Oriental dancing lady. The woman, examtaed by the police, corroborated the tale, and said that the man with whom she had eloped, having gambled the £80. away at the races, had deserted her, and she was left without a penny in the world. After various vicissitudes she had (eventually learnt Oriental dancing and obtained an engagement at the booth where her husba<nd had found her, and where she had been performing since the opening of the Exhibition very successfully as a hour!, having by the simple process of staining her arms and face with walnut juice acquired .a; sufficiently Eastern appearance to satisfy the manager of the show, who was no great stickler for scrupulous exactitude in' the carrying out of his advertised guarantee to the jiublie. But the Bordelalse has washed her face white again for her husband,5 touched by the copious tears of repentance, has,.forgiven and forgotten." The re-united couple left the Exhibition arm-in-arm'with the little girl in great delight holding1 her newlyfound mother by the hand.,