THE ROMANCE OF A RING.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 11341, 6 October 1898, Page 1

THE ROMANCE OF A RING.

A correspondent of the London Spectator Mr W. J. Hauible-Orofts, contributes to that journal an account of one of the most remarka 1 le coincidences which has probably ever been brought to light. When he was at Oxford many years ago his father gave him as an heirloom a ring bearing an inscription that it contained the hair of the Duke o? Wellington, which ring Mr Humble* Crofts, when he married, gave to his wife. In 1879, three years after their marriage, he and his wife were visiting a Mr W. Arkwright, and while at dinner one day the lady felt the ring slip from her finger. Search was made, but the ring could not be found, and to alt appearance it was irretrievably lost. Eighteen years later, however — at the beginning of this year, to be exact — Mra Humble-Crofts received a letter from her half-sister, Mrs Hodge, living in New Zealand, in which the letter mentioned that •' a church in which, she was interestcl out there hal received unexpected h?lp some years ago from a curious source. Her bister (Miss White) had sent ojt from England at her request some glores purchased at Bides, and on trying on a pair of these gloves she, to her astonishment, found inside one of them a ring containing ihe hair of the Duke of Wellington, which had evidently been drawn off tho finger unconsciously by some one trying <>n the glovo at rides. Unable to find the owner of the ring, and nofc liking to keep it, Air Hodge thought- it would bo a fair thing to sell it, and apply the proceeds to the church fund. She did so. and the purchaser was a >Ytr Frank Arkwtight, of Orerton, Marston (? Marlon) New Zealand, whose grandmother had given the ring to my father, and who hos most kindly replaced it in my possession." The Mr Frank Arkwrigiit mentioned above happens to be a cousin of tlie Mr W. -Arkwright, in whose house, in 1879, Mrs HumbleCrofts so strangely lost tho ring. The tale is, indeed, an extraordinary one. As the water- remarks, that of all the thousands of persorjs who purchase gloves a relative of the lady who lose the ring should have become possessed of the particular pair containing so strange an enclosure, and that the ring should hare then become the property of a descendant of the original owner, does surely go to show that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Such a coincidence could hardly huve been imagined by a novelist, and if imagined would assuredly have Leen disbelieved.