NOVEL BREACH OF PROMISE SUIT.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1904, 15 June 1892, Page 5

NOVEL BREACH OF PROMISE SUIT.

The 'Irish TimesV London correspondent says : —" We are promised a breach of promise case with some elements of freshness in it. The principals live ia the cider shire, where the defendant owns a property. He is a young gentleman of good family. In 1883 he became attached to the plaintiffone of the many daughters of a church dignitary. He made his offer, and was accepted. The wedding day was appointed, but before that date was reached the bridegroom elect got a bad spill from the saddle in the hunting field. He was laid up a long time, and wnen he was able to go about again the doctors ordered him a long sea voyage. He was away nearly two years, spending a good deal of the time in one of the colonies. Some time before his return an extraordinary change appeared in the character of bis letters to the girl he had left behind him. They were written in such rambling and extravagant terms as to suggest decided weakness of mind. Six or eight of the letters were of this sort, and their rehearsal in court is expected to be very diverting indeed. The defendant returned to Devonshire and home some eighteen months ago. He presented himself in a tattered dress, which he said he had worn in the bush. He persisted in wearing this garb, and showed a distressing change for the worse in his manner. He invited his lady-.love, her family, and another of his acquaintances to a garden party. He received them in a suit of chain mail, and the guests found themselves in the company of a policeman from the village, a postman, the estate laborers and their families, and others. Music was supplied by an organ grinder, hired for the ocDasion. The amusement was a series of wheelbarrow races, with the ladies of lower dpgree seated in the vehicles, and before the respectabilities retired their host, lifting his vizor, announced his intention to keep house in this good fashion of bringing the poor and their betters together in social union. His conduct became so glaring that the young lady's parents, after having obtained a medical opinion to the effect that the ancient hurt must have permanently affected the young gentleman's head, wrote withdrawing their consent to the marriage in the interest of their daughter's happiness. The letter was acknowledged in curt but perfectly collected terms ; the vagaries and absurdities of the defendant ceased forthwith ; he resumed his natural habit? and utterances ; and when, last October, a lady whom he married in Australia appeared on the scene, nobody could doubt the perfect sanity with which he introduced her as his wife. The claim for damages is based on the plea tnat defendant obtained his release from the engagement by false pretences."