OCR Text |
Show STRANGE FINDS --- The bank of England has had no end of valuables committed to its keeping. The vaults of its establishment hold moldering chests, deposited there for safety's sake, and apparently forgotten by their owners. In 1873 one fell to pieces from sheer rottenness, exposing to sight a quantity of massive plate and a bundle of yellow papers. The latter proved to be a collection of love letters of the period of the restoration, which the directors were enabled to restore to the lineal descendant of the original owner. In 1875 a tin box was fished out of the Seine containing more than five hundred letters addressed to diverse persons in Paris. The box - set afloat miles above Paris --- had been hermetically sealed, and was furnished with little metal sails, that it might catch the current of the river at every point; but it had failed to achieve a successful voyage, and laid at the bottom of the river for years with its freight of letters for the besieged Parisians, some of whom, however, had the please of receiving them five years after date. |