Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1883 — A Lucky Pauper. [ARTICLE]

A Lucky Pauper.

Few sublunary pleasures oan equal the positive rapture with which an inmate of a workhouse must receive the unexpected intelligence that he had become the owner of £250,000. The revulsion of mind must be so great as almost to cause the pauper’s reason to tremble in itft seat. But such is, indeed, the good fortune which is reported to have befallen an inmate of the Portsmouth “Union,” owing to the emergence from Chaneery of a longburied fund and the settlement of an antiquated dispute. Nobody exactly knows how much money is at the present moment lying idle in the hands of the Lord Chancellors or the Vice Chancellors, or the Ushers of the Court of Chancery. Some of it was lately used for erecting the Royal Courts of Justice. It is comforting to find that a small portion of the funds held by the court has been drawn oft' for so commendable a purpose as that of gilding a paupeV’s existence with the sunshine of opulence. When Mark Twain and his companions became possessors of a big Nevada silver mine, they lay awake a whole night smoking and conversing with each other, through the wooden partitions of their bed-rooms, as to whether they should live in the future in New York, Paris or London mansions, and how many dozen servants they should keep.. But what did the Portsmouth pauper think? We can imagine him, in p. paroxysm of joy, tearing his workhouse garments to ribbons, breaking the window-panes to fragments for the last time, aud taking an affecting leave of the master. The question whether he will reside at Berkeley or Belgrave square we must leave to the enriched lack-all to settle for himself, but W'e would humbly suggest to him that a portion of his newlygotten wealth might be reasonably paid back to a generous nation which has supported him for probably a number of years on gratuitous skilly. —London Telegraph.