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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1290, 19 November 1896, Page 12

Louis, the Greek peasant, who won the footrace between Marathon and Athens, at the recent revival of the Olympic Games in Greece, has since been treated as a sort of demi-god. His sayings have been reported in Ihe papers, and the King of Greece invited both Louis and his father to the palace. Private individuals gave him large sums of money; and numerous tradesmen offered to supply all his requirement for a year free of cost. Mr Alma-Tadema, the popular E.oyal Academician, began life in a remote village in the flattest, dreariest part of Holland, on the banks of the Zuyder Zee. He was born in January, 1536, in the little village of Dronryp, near Leeuin Friesland. Ilis father, Pieter Tadema, came of a good old burgher stock and was a notary by profession. Ho died when Lawrence Alum, the youngest of the children, was but four years of age. From his childhood young Tadema showed signs of talent, and, as a schoolboy, every spire minute was spent is drawing*