TWO FAMOUS CASES OF LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXII, Issue XXV, 24 June 1899, Page 861

TWO FAMOUS CASES OF LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

One is always afraid that when a man falls suddenly in love he may fall out of it equally quickly, but amoug celebrated men of the century who have fallen in love at first sight and married happily are Garibaldi and Bismarck. In Garibaldi’s autobiography the story of his love is told. He relates how, feeling the need of some one who would love him. and believing women to be ‘the most perfect beings,’ he determined to seek a wife for himself. He was then pacing the deck of the Itanarica, and he chanced to look upon the houses of the Barra, a little hill at the entrance of the Laguna of St. Catherine, in Brazil. With the aid of a glass which he carried he saw a young girl, and he ordered the men to put him ashore. On landing he tried to find the house which he had seen from the ship, but failed, and, meeting an acquaintance, he accepted an invitation to take coffee at his house.

‘On entering the house,’ says Garibaldi, ‘the first person on whom my gaze fell was the one who had caused my coming ashore. It was Anita, the mother of my children. We both remained in an ecstatic silence, gazing at each other like two persons who do not meet for the fiist- time and who seek in each other’s lineaments something which shall revive remembrance. At last I saluted her and I said, ‘You nusi be mine.’ I spoke but little Portuguese, and I said these audacious words in Italian. However, I seemed to have some magnetic power in my insolence. I had tied a knot which death only could break.’ Bismarck’s courtship was tquallv brief. Bismarck met land lost his heart to Fraulein von Puttkammer ar a wedding, and thereupon wrote to her parents and boldly demanded her. As at this time he was a wild youth, whose pranks were the talk of the country, it is not surprising that the young lady’s father should say, ‘lt was as if some one had struck me on the head with e heavy axe.’ However, Bismarck’s love

being evidently returned, the lady’s parents invited him to visit ihem that they might know some: air.g mere about him than report told them. At the time of his arrival the parents were ready to greet heir guest with proper solemnity, and their daughter stood by with downcast eyes. Bismarck rode up and, hastily alighting, threw his arms around his sweetheart’s neck and kissed her before any one had time to protest. The result was a formal betrothal. The Ti ou Chancellor’ was fond of telling this tale, and he generally added to it the remark, ‘lt is she who made me what I am.’