Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1906 — A STRANGE ROMANCE. [ARTICLE]

A STRANGE ROMANCE.

(ieurg« Homs and Ilia Private Main) sin n Colony. Our favorite story is the one which Mr. Clifford calls “The Romance of a Soot's Family.” George Ross, the son of a poor tenant farmer in the Orkneys, went out iu a whaler to the China seas, entered the East India company's navy, and ultimately took to shipbuilding. When fortune came to him he went back to Scotland and carried off his whole family to the Cocos islands, which he annexed as his own. The tale of the colony which he founded there is scarcely inferior in interest to the history of Sarawak. His sou was a dreamer, but his grandson was a mighty man of his hands, who turned the settlement of the Cocos Malays Into a model commonwealth. “They have developed much of the Scotsman's love of order, regularity, neatness and cleanliness —all virtues foreign to the race from which they spring. Their womaufolk, who tyrannize shamefully over the men since George Ross tins set his face like a flint against the time-honored practice of wife-beating, indulge every Saturday in a wholesale ‘redding up’ of their houses, the like of which is not to be seen in all Asia. * * * Their sole lapse from virtue's way appears to be tbqt they are apt to construct and conceal from the sight of their own rulers eertalu illicit stills—things not unkuowu in the records of Scotland, but startlingly inappropriate to a Mohamnletan people—wherein to brew coeoanut toddy of an exceeding viloness.” It is said to think that the old isolation Is likely to disappear, since a cable station is to be erected on the atoll, and strange men and Ideas will soon break In upon the island calm. Every one must regret with Mr. Clifford the “loss of the simplicity and the seclusion, which have been the tools in the hands of an obscure Scot’s family wherewith to fashion something so near In likeness to the perfect Btate,” —London Spectator.

The man who marries for money seldom becomes round-shouldered from carrying what he gets.