VENTURESOME N.Z. MAID.

NZ Truth, Issue 183, 19 December 1908, Page 6

VENTURESOME N.Z. MAID.

, — ♦ Mad Journey Across Texas Forests. An interesting little lady is at present m London, who prefers to be known as Miss Henriijiuette Maude, though that is not her name. She is the daughter ofr, a New Zealand judge, but, m a fit of pique, she one day ran away Irom her home; m Nayier, and. has not since returns'd. \Yith £10 m her pocket, speaking many languages (including Maori, three others spoken m the South Seas, and Hindustani), she determined to see all the world, and earn her living as she went along. That was m 1903. Since then she has traveled 55,000 miles, a lot of' it on foot, and has stocked enough excitement and hard times to last her tbe rest of her lite. "FASHIONED SO- SLENDERLY." She is so young and gentle, and looks so charmingly fragile m her fashicnalle costume, that has nothing cosmopolitan m it" but the hat, that a press representative listened with amazement to her stories of the South Seas and the Avilds of Texas. "My idea was that I could travel-.. about, 'getting sufficient to live upon by giving entertainments from town I to town." So the late Hon. Richard Seddon gave her his blessing and a jade- I stone, charm, and away she went, first to Sydney, From there she went to the Fiji Isjands, and then the winds of the, world her where she, listed. •. ' She dodged about among the Pacific dots, from island to island, living how she could: ''Miss Maude"' visited .Thursday Island, Samoa, Honolulu, and Tahiti,-, and at .last, got to Vancouver. There -.she joined an English company of opera singers, and went across Canada; entered the-. States, giving drawing-room monologues, or any other society amusements that occurred to her versatile mind; and x at last found herwdf m Portland, Oregon, on the Pacific side again. , -■-.. ONE IN FIVE HUNDRED. ' At ? 'Frisco she was one of 500 m a dramatic competition, and won the gold medal, which was presented to her by President Roosevelt. She theri went to Los'Aligeles, and undertook the mad jour-, hey '.across the Texas deserts oh foot. Her , equipment was a "" revolver , a>waterproof sheet, some oatmeal biscuits, !a knapsack, and a water flask. She was held up four times' by footpads. Finally her Hardships became too much for her and some cowboys found her exhausted on the prairie and took her to a ranche. There she lay ill for three "wceis, and wnen well the admiring "boys", made a "round-up for dollars," and put her on the train for New Orleans. -She then jburneye.d across the Eastern States to New York', where she arrived with two shil ings, tut a lot of pluck.. She found there that the latter was of more value than the f oncer, for New York was worse than- the -South Seas. Now she is m London, friendless but cheery, and is going to entertain the public again.