Public Ledger

A Daughter's Stratagem.

[London Letter to Cincinnati Enquirer.]

Social events, in all their extravagance of opposites, are made more rapidly and generally in London than in any other city of the world. Not many weeks ago a fair girl, sick of the blankness composed of four walls, called "home," sought solace for the cravings of her wandering soul and became a convert, or, more properly speaking, a retrovert, for all England was at one time Catholic. She became a member of the growing congregations of the Church of Rome. Her father, the Lord of Justice, on learning this, expelled her from his house instantly. What was she to do? With the keen wit of her father, the great cunning of her mother, she went that night to the parish poorhouse and sought lodgings. The red tape of these places every one knows. "Who are you!" is the first question asked. She answered this question, and it was the last, as amazement created silence, and silence begot direct inquiry at the near-by residence of the Lord of Justice.

"What! my daughter in the poorhouse," he exclaimed frantically. "Yes; where else should she go in the absence of friends, if you expelled her from her home, and simply on the ground of her electing to find a new road to heaven?" responded the parish official. The fear of society rather than the love of the daughter created more than consternation. A purse, in the absence of a heart, was opened, and the daughter given twenty-five dollars per annum to live out of the poorhouse, but never to enter the "home" of her parents.