ROMANTIC STORIES OF PRECIOUS PAPERS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 13937, 20 December 1905, Page 9

ROMANTIC STORIES OF PRECIOUS PAPERS.

An elderly couple living in Paris have recently 'met with a sad misfortune. Inside a , dilapidated old hat-box, winch the most experienced burglar might have ignored, they had placed their entire fortune —a sheaf of bank-notes, amounting to over £SOOO. Periodically either the husband or wife opened the bos, and counted the notes to sec that their wealth was still intact. Imagine their surprise when, on going to ft the other day, not n single note was to be found—only a little heap of dust. Rats had entered tho box and devoured every scrap of the precious paper. More fortunate was an old Belgian peasant woman, although at first she was thrown into just as hopeless despair. She had laid on tho grass a jacket containing bank-notes worth £4B altogether, and then set about her work in the fields, accompanied by a pet goto- To her horror, she suddenly caught sight of the goat munching something that looked like her precious ■ fortune. Examination proved her surmise to ho true. The goat had been browsing on her bank-notes. That same evening the pet was killed and the chewed paper removed from its stomach. It looked a sorry mess, but the old woman lost no time in submitting it to the National Bank of Belgium, which, after verifying the facts, and proving, by chemical analysis that the panel - had been notes issued by them, paid the women the £4B. On ,one occasion the Bank of England had presented to them for payment a hard ball of paper. It was a £5 note which had been given by a prominent artist to his sister for payment of a hill. The young lady had placed it in the pocket of her dress and promptly forgot it till the same dress made its return from the laundry. Washing, starching and ironing had not improved tho bank-note’s appearanoe, but when the ball of paper was carefully unrolled, there was sufficient to see that it had been a. bank-note, and the bank paid the money without hesitation. Mere than once the Bank of England has paid twice for one bank-note. On one' occasion they lost in this way £BO,OOO. It happened that one of the directors, desirous of purchasing an estate, drew from the bank a single note for the, amount mentioned. This, on returning home, lie placed on the mantelpiece, when, immediately on doing so, he was called from the room. A few moments later he came into the room again, hut, alas! tho note had mysteriously disappeared. To the director’s mind there seemed little doubt but that the valuable piece of paper had fallen into the fire. Robbery was out of tho quest ion, for no one had entered the room. 'His colleagues at the bank, believing this story, gave him a second note on tho understanding that the first, if found, should be returned. Thirty years afterwards, when the director had been dead a considerable time, a stranger presented the missing note. Being payable to hearer, tho bank could not avoid their obligation, and they had to be the losers of the sum. It was learned afterwards that a builder had bought the banker’s house, and in the course of the demolition had discovered the note hidden in a crevice of the chimney. How a bank-note once saved a man’s life is a most romantic story. In the ordinary course of business many years ago a Bank of England note—now in the possession of a famous collector—was paid into a Liverpool merchant’s office. On coming into the hands of the cashier ho found, while examining it to discover its genuineness, that there wore faint traces of red writing upon it. Tho note had been in circulation for years, and it was only by tho dint of extraordinary pains that the partly obliterated characters were finally deciphered. This was the message it bore: “ If this note should fall into the hands of John Dean, of Longhill, near Carlisle, he will learn thereby that hie brother ’is languishing a prisoner in Algiers.” Mr Dean was communicated with, and he appealed to the Government to endeavour to obtain his brother’s release from captivity. Interesting themselves warmly in the matter, the Prime Minister and the joint Foreign Secretaries, after the most arduous and determined inquiries, learned that the unhappy prisoner, who had traced the above sentence with a splinter dipped in his own blood, bad been a slave to the Dey of Algiers for about eleven years. Eventually, the Government' succeeded in ransoming Mr Dean from tho Dey, but the poor fellow had endured so much privation and hardship while working in the galleys that ho lived hut a short while after his freedom.