A TROUBLED CAREER.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXI, Issue 7246, 21 May 1884, Page 5

A TROUBLED CAREER.

(Proni the Argus.) Many old colonists who were frequenters of the Criterion Hotel, in Collins street west, and who remember the magical rapidity with which it was built, will also recall to mind its first landlord. He was a Prussian by birth, but had been educated in England, and emigrated to America, from whence he was allured to Australia by the discovery of the goldfields. Upon a site originally purchased for the price of a horse and dray, Samuel Moss, or Salmi Morse, as he called himself in Liter years, erected an hotel which was famous in the fifties. Its hall was the scene of vice-regal festivities, and also of Fourth of July celebrations, when G. F. Train used to indulge in spread-eagleism and the quaint oratory of Consul Tarleton was greatly relished. The bridal chamber was also one of the sights of the city, and everybody in those days used to bo “ called to the bar ” of the Criterion, who had business in that part of Melbourne. Moss made a fortune, and sank some of it in building what is now the Convent of Abbotsford. Koturning to the United States, he married a wife in San Francisco, and took a farm in Mendoncino county, where he resided from 1859 to 1865. He "separated from his wife, and she is now keeping a small shop in that city. He was afterwards heard of in San Domingo, and about four years ago he turned up ki New York with a version of the Passion Play, which had been pe rf ormed with some success in San Francisco. He obtained from Mr Abbey a promise to produce it at Booth’s Theatre, but the proposition was so strongly condemned by the Press and in the pulpit that the idea had to be abandoned. Moss then leased a church, and converted it into a theatre, but the Mayor refused to license it, and Moss, who had invested all the money he possessed, and as much as he could borrow from other people, in the undertaking, was ruined. Then he wrote something which he called a comedy, entitled " A Bustle Among the Petticoats,” which proved a dismal failure. -Then ho seems to have formed an attachment for an actress, a Miss Blackburn, and the Cosmopolitan Theatre was taken. Here he produced a drama, under the title of “On the Yellowstone.” This also shared the fate of its predecessor, and the ex-land-lord of the Criterion found himself, at the ago of 58, in straightened circumstances, and somewhat unhinged in his mind.' After spending the evening of Feb. 20 at the house of Miss Blackburn, he left it shortly after midnight, and on the following morning his b.dy was found floating on the surface of the North Fiver, with strong suspicions, as our New York correspondent asserts, that he was the victim of foul play.