False Rumor

Algernon Bennet Langton Ashton, 67, British complete letter writer, issued a statement last week. Said he to the London Daily Chronicle: "A horrible rumor has reached me that I have written my last letter to 'the newspapers. . . . This rumor is wholly false, as I am now determined to go on writing until I am dead."

Algernon Ashton has written more than 2,000 printable letters to the newspapers, a world's record, even for England where writing to newspapers is a national pastime.

His first letter appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1887, correcting a statement that George Cruikshank, famed caricaturist, was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery --his tomb really being in St. Paul's Cathedral. His most recent letter appeared last month--on Beethoven. Meanwhile he has written on every subject, but chiefly "of graves, of worms and epitaphs." Searching for epistolary material he has become an expert on London and Paris burying grounds. Disappointments, which come to every man in public life, forced his retirement in 1903. He came back. In 1908 he retired again, publicly and with strong vows of abstinence. For three years he struggled heroically against the deadly fascination of the habit. The habit won. Then Algernon Ashton faced his weakness squarely. He accepted it, took pen in hand, wrote a letter to the Times. Old now, but proud, he perseveres.