Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1889 — From a Corpse to a Tigress. [ARTICLE]

From a Corpse to a Tigress.

A traveler from the wilds of Kwangai has told us the following weird story: A native’s wife was taken very ill, and before she died she told her husband (with whom she had lived on the best of terms, bearing one son): “I have a secret to confide to you, which I never told before for your sake and the child’s. When I die do not nail up my coffin, but leave it for a time out on the mountain. Have two live fowls ready in the bouse, for after I have been dead a hundred days I will return to the realm of living men for a time and come back to our home. Fear not, but if I make for the child, offer me the two fowls, and say that you yourself will send the infant, and that I need not be anxious; that between the dead and the living a gulf is fixed, and. I should rest among the departed and not oome back to trouble the child. I will look at you fixedly for -« spell, take the fowls, strangle them and begone, never to return. My body will not lie down again in its coffin, but will be transformed into a living tiger, and if hereafter you come out to the place and see the clothing lying by the coffin you will know that my words have come true.” Hotding her husband’s hand she expired. The ghost appeared at due date, did as the living wife had foretold and disappeared in the jungle, and when the man visited the coffin some days after he found the l cast off clothes, and wept when he thought of their former happy life together and her strange fate. While indulging his tears he saw a tigress stalk from the jungle and knew it was his wife transformed into a new existence. Gently he stroked its striped back and with a melancholy roar it bounded away. No deed of blood was ever known to be wrought by this most gentle of tigresses on the mountain, and the child has grown up and prospers.—San Francisco Chronicle.