THE SNOWBALL PRAYER.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10957, 27 April 1907, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE SNOWBALL PRAYER.

: For some time (says the London Evening News) a mysterious documerit known as, "the- snowball -prayer? has been agitating the minds of hundreds 'of thousands of recipients m London and other cities, both m England arid 'abroad. . Persons who received the prayer arid refused to re-write it and send a copy daily to other addresses were threatened with "some misfortune;'? while; those, who carried but the iristrucHons were proriiised "grat joy." Light is now beginning to dawn- ri this mystery,. The Throne, which offered £100 reward for evidence of the origina- 1 tor of the prayer, states that "many hold that tins latest craze is due ta the latest instance of madness m the peerage." Ihe paper relates the following amazing, story '.— On .; November 12th; tw,o,,.Har»ey_ street^Specißli^rin^meritufeidiseases were suddenly summoned to the house ; of. one of "the , fairest , an.d,.' youngest ' peeresses m Mayfair; Tliey found their patient— who had been mildly lunatic" for half a year— :decided-y._ worse.' Her-;distracted husb&rid wsiU m darige. pf becoming insane himself hy the , constant sight iirid sound of her -madness, and. her trustees and* his fainily 'insisted th£t the poor lady must be placed m a priyate asylum and watched night arid day. On the day of her seizure Lady A— — had spent over an hour m writing letters. Hitherto few restrictions ltad "been placed upon her actions, and her letters were so generally found fo be quite normal that they were not invariably examined. On November 10th she had given her nurse 24 envelopes to post addressed to friends and acquaintances. On her escritoire there remained only one communication— Uiis prayer and, its correlated request. The history of this case of lunacy dates back almost to the honeymoon which followed one of the ihost bfiUiant pro-Lent w-ddings of last year. Commencing' with depression and lassitude, it took on a. .religious form during Father Bernard Vaugh'an's attack on Mayfair' s morals; and since that date. tlie unhappy . lady bemoaned the wickedness of her World, her own fate and her husband's, arid has spent much of her life m tears. This is the story that obtains credence m the West End, where a very larg© proportion -of the. earlier prayers were posted.