SMOTHERED IN DIAMONDS

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12255, 4 June 1914, Page 7

SMOTHERED IN DIAMONDS

LADY'S COSTLY TRIP. The daughter of the multi-millionaire, "Lucky .lack" Baldwin, Mrs Clara Sfcocker, herself known throughout America as "the woman smothered with diamonds," recently started on a trip, the-cost of which will easily reach half-a-million dollais. This wealthy lady, with her husband and a party of friends, left Los Angeles in a specially-chartered train, and on arriving at New York occupied the £2OOO Imperial suite of the steamship Imperator. Afti :• touring Europe in speci-ally-chartered trains and yachts, the party returns to the United States, where Mr Stocker will fit up his private yacht, the California, as a floating palace, and will commence an extensive cruise, which will embrace a trip through the Panama Canal to the Panama Exposition at San Francisco.

During a protracted stay there Mr Stocker intends to spend thousands of dollars in entertaining his friends, and every night the yacht will be brilliantly illuminated by an elaborate electrical display. Mrs Stocker declared that she liked diamonds because they represented money, and she intended to buy them all the time, the larger the .better. She did not dare to wear all her collection too often, howevsr, because she- was afraid of robbers> and also because of the weight.

Reports of the great expenditure of Mrs Stocker have spread abroad, and she is forced to employ a secretary, whose sole duty it is to open the begging letters, which come in scores every day from every part, of the globe. Money brought much -joy.- said Mrs Stocker, but it was not" everything. "Money was not responsible for keeping me and my husband together for thirty-five years, because we married while we'were poor!" Mrs Stocker frankly admitted that she was not very fond of children, because "they muss things- up so.' "They're all right' in the country,' she added,* "but in town they certainly give me a pain in the 'neck." Mrs Stocker denied rather heatedly the statement that she intended to endow a girls' home, and said that' neither she nor her husband wanted to die in the workhouse. The wealthy couple were expected in New York by the middle of April, and by way of preface to the brilliant visit the newspapers are publishing photographs of the luxurious cars in which they will travel across the continent and a minute description of the skilled staff retained to minister to them en route.