PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
VOLUME 93.
SEPTEMBER 10, 1887.
STRANGE ADVENTURES OF ASCENA LUKINGLASSE.
(By Phil Uppes, Author of "An Out-of-Luck Young Man," "Jack and Jill went up the Hill," "The Bishop and his Grandmother," &c.)
Ascena's Narrative.
The story which I have to tell is more than strange. It is so terrible, so incredible, so entirely contrary to all that any ordinary reader of the London Journal or the "penny dreadfuls" has ever heard of, that even now I have some doubt in telling it. I happen, however, to know it is true, and so does my husband. My husband will come in presently with his narrative. There! that ought to make you curious. A very good commencement.
My early life was uneventful. I was a foundling. I was left with two old ladies (I fancy I may work them up some day into "character" sketches) by a perfect gentleman, who, after giving them £200, went away the next morning to Vienna for ever. He left with these two old ladies a little wardrobe full of clothes, but there was not a mark, nor so much as an initial, upon a single thing. They had all been cut out with a sharp pair of scissors.