AN AUSTRALIAN IN LONDON.

Colonist, Volume L, Issue 1239, 22 October 1908, Page 4

AN AUSTRALIAN IN LONDON.

A very simple individual from Australia appeared at Mansion House She other day to assist in the conviction of an elderly man who had robhim of £110 (writes a London correspondent.) Thomas Brown was a farmer in Australia, and a fish out of .vater in . the yard of the Bank of England. He had just come out of tho Australian Joint Stock Bank, ivhen a man asked him the way to :he Orient Shipping Company's Office. "Are you going to Australia?" enquired Thomas Brown. 'Yes," replied the man, and he and Thomas Brown became friends, de2ided to go by the same boat, and latsr came to having a single drink it a time at the same bar. By-and-by a third person asked him the way ilso shyly admitted himself an Australian ; his uncle, he said, had diod, leaving him a fortune of £180,CG0. A sum of £10,000 had te be distributed among the poor of Australia, md as the Tertium Quid was going bo Rome, he begged his two Austra'ian friends to administer the distribution, and offered them £100 cor their services. This engaged Thomas Brown at once, md lie saw no reason why he should lot himself at once put up a deposit if £110, as suggested by the Tertium Quid, to show his bona fides. It was \ot until twenty minutes after the

'friend" has disappeared with the noney that Thomas Brown gathered his wits and_ went for the police. Shortly after' he was wrestling with -he Tertium Quid, who is now in ■;aol for six months. As for Thomas -irown, this is what the magistrate ihinks of him: — "The Australian gentleman can go back to Australia •,nd report himself to a lunatic asy'iim. He is more fit to bo in an vsylum than in London. A more "oolish tiling I have never heard )f."