AMERICAN NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 304, 22 December 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

AMERICAN NOTES.

(from Our Special Correspondent.)

, VANCOUVER, November 13 AX AUSTRALIAN TRAGEDY.

A tragedy which started in Brisbane and was continued in Sydney had another chapter added to it in"the Police Court here, six thousand miles away from where it started. Miss Florence Lewis, who.declares she is not the wife of Michael Kupler. of Brisbane, though at one lime she thought she was. asked the Court for protection against Kupler. She laid information charging that he threatened her that if she did not return to live with him he would bring charges of theft against her, alleging that she stole money in Australia. Kupler and Miss Lewis were married in Sydney two years ago, after a brief courtship in Brisbane. All went well until last spring, when the girl learned, she says, that Kupler had another wife living. She refused to dwell with him any longer and came here, where she engaged in domestic service. Kupler followed her and begged her to return with him to Australia. She declined, and he said he would have her arrested for theft in Australia. She handed the magistrate a document which, &h« said, contained proof that Kupler had committed bigamy. The magistrate sent the ease up for trial. When it came before the County Court the Judge obtained from Kupler the promise that he would no longer annoy Miss Lewis, and would leave the city. So the chapter ends.

DOWIE THE PROPHET.

• Now that John Alexander Dowie. Elijah H., is preparing £0 go to Australia to spend Christmas, and his wife and son, lady's maid and negro valet, have gone to Adelaide via England, the people "down under" will be interested in knowing that Elijah 11. is not the son of John Murray Dowie, of Essex, lowa, but that his name is taken from an aristocratic English family. In a broken voice, with tears streaming down his face, Dowie told a New York audience that he was the son "of a British army officer by a 'Scotch marriage.'" He heaped villification upon John Murray Dowie, who, he declared, had made his mother believe that her marriage to Dowie's father was shameful. He said the latter was taken away from his mother by his relatives, and she in the first flush of her shame, had sought to give her son a name by marrying John Murray Dowie.

Elijah denounced, the press because it had published extracts from letters passing between himself and John Murray Dowie. indicating the former's denunciation of the American as a parent. It was these letters that led to Elijah , .-* exposition of hie "great life secret." He said the reporters were "yellow dogs" for getting hold of the correspondence, and denounced them as "poisonous reptiles, who have wrecked thousands of homes and broken thousands of hearts."

Speaking of his reputed father, he said: "For many years I did not see John Murray Dowie. Hard times came upon him, and I brought liim from Australia at my own expnse, and gave him n. home in my own house. One day lie fell ill, and it was then that he told mc that my good, noble mother had been tricked into a Scotch marriage with a British army oflicer of high standing, and that she, to hide her shame, had married that scoundrel, who sat there before, mc. There is no doubt that her marriage to the scoundrel John Murray Dowie was invalid, that the Scotch marriage could not have been invalided, and that 1 was the rightful son of the officer. What nay place should have been it is not for mc to say. I shall never seek il, for if it carried with it the finest ducal coronet in the United Kingdom I would not want to change it fur the ' position I hold."

Dowie went, on to stale that his father led one of the great charges in the Crimea, and died like a soldier nt the head of his troops. He burst into invective of (ho bitterest type against Iho press for publishing the letters, and s;;id he was glad his wife and son had that day left for England and Australia, and hail been spared the sight of his humiliation. In weeping likened himself 10 David and Solomon, but added that he did not consider he was illegitimate. Then he pronounced this benediction:

"(xod. look down upon the irresponsible band of criminals who write for the papers, and punish their lies, and have mercy on them. Have mercy, O God, and grant grace io the country, and may it muzzle, and, if needs be, destroy the newspapers.*'

His mission to New York was a grievous failure. He lost money, and that hurts Dowie.

BPvIEF NOTES OF THE NEWS

An iron wreck, supposed to be that of the British warship Condoi, h;is been located in 2f> fathoms of water oil' Barkley Sound. Vancouver Island. The Condor went, down with all on board two years ago. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway has deposited with the Dominion Government £ 1,000,000 a.s an earnest of its intention to proceed with the construction of a new transcontinental railway.

Australian correspondents of Canadian financial papers note that little effort seems to be put forth by Canadian merchants to make a market in the an-

tipodes. ' Sir Sanford Fleming rejoices keenly over the Australian Senates' rejection of Sir Edmund Barton's proposals favouring the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company. Bennett Hurleigh. the war correspondent of the London,- England, "JhxWy Telegraph." left Vancouver a few days ago for Japan. He is considered a stormy petrel. The* British Columbia general election resulted Hn the Mcßride (Conservative) Government being sustained by a majority of two. The House meets en November 26.