His Weight in Gold.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 112, 25 July 1885, Page 3

His Weight in Gold.

No farmer with live stock to prepare for the Christmas market ever watched the development of flesh and fat on a healthy sow or bullock with more earnest solicitude than the poor of Travancore, in India, look for an increase in the bulk of their good rulor, the Maharajah. Ho is onco during his lifetime weighed against a mass of pure gold, which is afterwards distributed in charity. This ceremony has just been performed, but the people, who are not thankful for small mercies when they might ge larger ones, aie not altogether satisfied with the result. The present Maharajah is what sporting men would call a "feather weight," turning the scale at nine stone ; and his needy subjects were anxious that he should defer trying his weight till later on, hoping that a few added years of good feeding might put a couple of stone of flesh on his bones. The late Maharajah was a man of very satisfactory habit of body. At forty-seven years of age, when he got into the scales for the benefit of the poor, his carefully nourished body weighed nearly fifteen stone. If Mabavajahs were brought into office by a general election, the heaviest candidate would inevitablyget in; Travancore having previously exhibited some such bills, among others, as the following : "Vote for Fatmannijah, the eighteen stoner. Thirty years of age, healthy, and still spreading. Poll early."