£3600 FOR £100

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 138, 7 March 1941, Page 6

£3600 FOR £100

Man Keeps Word Given 40 Years Ago WAIRARAPA STORY

An amazing, story of a man s honesty comes from the Wairarapa. There, 40 years* ago, one of two brothers who had a station wanted to go to Alaska to try his luck in the Klondike gold rush. His brother was reluctant to see him go alone and when a station hand expressed his desire to join in the adventure, the brother who was to stay behind raised £lOO to make the trip by both men possible. As they left, the farm hand said to him, “We share equally in any profit.” After six years in the Klondike the station-holder brother returned to New Zealand, leaving the former station hand to carry on. In the passage of the years the two lost touch. Then, recently, a draft arrived for £2990 with advice that the borrower of the £lOO was disposing of his interests in the Klondike and leaving there. The receiver was reluctant to take this fulfilment of a bargain that was just by word of mouth, and casual and unpremeditated at that. So he wrote back asking the former station hand to come to New Zealand and, if he still liked New Zealand station life, to make his home on the station. This letter went astray. Then the other brother was advised that no acknowledgment was received of the original draft but the letter enclosed another, one for £7OO, representing a half-share of further assets realized. What the further outcome of this fulfilment of a verbal 40-year-old bargain will be is not yet known-but the whole matter,takes its place worthily among some of the extraordinary incidents associated with the Klondike and a time when no documents were needed to bind a man to his word.