A MODERN CINDERELLA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5490, 21 June 1879, Page 7

A MODERN CINDERELLA.

As English paper S3ys :—" Visitors to Naples during the past season must frequently have noticed on the Via Toledo— one of the finest and most frequented streets —an old woman, bent under the weight of years, clad in wretched mourning, creeping past the line of shops like a moving basrelief, and sometimes halting at a corner. She wore a tattered bonnet on her head, a thick black veil over her features, and a pair of ragged gloves on her finger?. She never spoke, she never put out her hand for charity, but took with a kind of growl whatever small coin the passengers might vouchsafe her. That old woman's gains were 20 francs per diem ; but who was she ? No one could tell, and she never answered questions. She seemed a spectre in the throng of Vanity Fair—an uncomfortable intruder whom the butterflies of fashion were only too glad to pay, and get rid of. The other day a couple of municipals guards laid hands on her, and bundling her into a cab, took hor off to the Mendicants' House. One of the female attendants striped her, when suddenly, from the filthy, fetid envelope of rags, emerged, Cinderella-like, a lusty young woman, considerably on this aide of 30, fresh-coloured, fat, and prepossessing. Her make np was a marvel of effect. Her curved spine was 'arranged' with a cord which passed round her neck, and was fastened at the knee. Her hump was manufactured from a ball of rags; her wrinkled 3od dirty white faca was managed with imitation parchment. ,Oa inquiry it was found thst this young woman was of good | family, and that the gains she so cleverly earned were brought regu'arly home to har parents, who kept a night-house, where scenes of the mo3t unhallowed revelry were j kept up till all honr3 of the morning."