COURTSHIPS BEGUN IN STRANGE PLACES.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 23, 22 March 1918, Page 2

COURTSHIPS BEGUN IN STRANGE PLACES.

Cemeteries and courtship seem difficult to think' of in conjunction, yet a Baltimore (U.S.A.) burial ground proved a most attractive trystingplace to a bereaved widow and widower of the Maryland city, whose acquaintance, begun while visiting the resting-place of their departed partners, ripened into an affection which ended at the altar.

A young railway engineer, named Charles Ogle, lost his wife, and frequently visited the spot where she lay buried in order to mediate and put a few flowers,on her grave. Mrs. Katherine Elder, who lost her husband, spent much of her time in the cemetery with the same object as Mr. Ogle. The two mourners soon began to notice one another, .and one day Mr. Ogle offered the weeping widow his sympathy, which was gratefully, if tearfully accepted. A few days later the ‘ two mourners met once more, and, having laid their floral offerings on the graves, strolled out of the cemetery together. Almost unconsciously their steps led them in the direction of the parsonage, of the Church' of St. John, where the Rev. Thomas Lowe, who seemed to expect them, speedily made them a one. But stranger still would one deem a lunatic asylum as a place in which a wooer should become a target for Cupid’s darts. . Yet an Englishman here found a successor to the mistress of his household after he had become a widower in pathetic circumstances. His first wife developed suicidal mania, and was placed in an asylum in the West of England. Here she remained for nearly a year, during which time she was placed in the . special charge of a pretty fair-haired nurse of. twenty-four, who made a pleasant impression on the husband of her patient. At the end of this time the patient died, and, of course, the widower had no further need to call at the asylum. But after a few weeks he began to miss seeing the pretty nurse, and when six months had passed he felt so strong a desire to know if she were still in the same situation that one day he called and inquired for her. Six months later, when he considered his term of mourning had expired, he proposed, and was accepted. Nor is a prison a very pleasant place in which to meet one’s future life-partner, hut several instances go to prove that their are' unlikelier spots. Early in the nineteenth century a young man named Benjamin Flower was imprisoned in Newgate for writing a spirited defence of the French Revolution. While there he was visited by Miss Eliza Gould, a woman of a philanthropical turn of mind.

Mr. Flower was strongly attracted by Miss Gould's goodness no less than by her remarkable .beauty, and when his term of imprisonment expired and he gained his freedom, the friendship began in such romantic circumstances continued. Ultimately, finding that they could not live apart, they were married.