A Tall Story From Russia.
If we may trust in the matter the Warsaw Courier, an extraordinary incident has occurred in that city. A lady engaged, through the medium of a domestic servants’ agency, a young girl as assistant children’s maid, her particular charge being an infant of 18 months. Mariana is a quiet-looking, respectable girl of 16 years of age.
At the first sight of the new nurse the infant was seized with a paroxysm of fear. The lady reported the matter to her husband, who was entertaining half-a-dozen gentlemen, and he sent for the girl. Mariana had scarcely entered the room when a standard lamp blazed up to the ceiling, three large oil paintings fell to the floor with a simultaneous crash, a timepiece sprang from a sideboard, and a large wall barometer was hurled across the room and shattered.
The only person who remained placidly unmoved by the manifestation was the maid. Before dismissing her the master of the house questioned the girl, who acknowledged that such inexplicable incidents had frequently occurred in her presence. The girl herself is described as being of a quiet and amiable character and disposition, and of blameless reputation. She is slenderly built, and of pallid appearance, and has always suffered, more or less, from insomnia.
She has been handed over to the care of the Warsaw psychologist, Dr Ochorowicz.
Edinburgh Evening News, 1st February 1896.