“Girl Is a Recluse”
Young Woman Jilted by Fiance Leads to Act.
Spends Her Time Working on Farm, With Only Two Deer Hounds For Her
Companions—Attires Self as Man.
Santa Monica, Cal.—Like a chapter
from a novel is the present career of Miss Alma Pitlinzer, a handsome young
woman, who, wearing male attire, is living the life of a recluse, apart from
all relatives and friends, in the beautiful Topanga canyon, eight miles north
of this city.
Several days ago a friend of the
young woman’s father, who was a visitor at one of the mountain resorts,
recognized her and urged her to return home, but without avail.
Miss Pitlinzer declared she had
left all her old life behind and did not wish to return.
"I am living contentedly
here, next to nature,” she said, "free from everyone, and I do not care to
go back to the sham social life, where there is no real happiness. All I desire
is to be let alone. Tell my people that I am happy and contented here in the
mountains with my dogs and ranch.”
Eight years ago the young woman,
who was then nineteen years old, and had just been graduated from high school,
was living in a beautiful home at Walnut Hills, a fashionable suburb in Cincinnati.
She was one of the belles in the
younger social set, and a short time after her graduation was betrothed to a
young lawyer of that city, the marriage to take place the following year. Miss
Pitlinzer was happy at her contemplated wedding and took pride in exhibiting
her engagement ring to her wide circle of friends.
She had just begun to prepare her
wedding gown when her fiance became infatuated with her chum and eloped with
her to Louisville, where they were married. When Miss Pitlinzer received the news
of the wedding she fell ill. The shock caused her to have brain fever, and for
three months she hovered between life and death. The young lawyer had called on
Miss Pitlinzer almost every evening up to the day of his elopement, and she had
idolized him as a man of the highest honor.
After partly recovering from her
illness, Miss Pitlinzer bade her parents good-by and left home, saying she was
going on a trip to California to recuperate. She came to Santa Monica seven
years ago, and after spending five weeks at the beach, purchased a small ranch
in Topango canyon, three miles from the ocean shore, where she built a two-room
cottage, being assisted in the work of construction by an elderly Mexican, who
owns a ranch adjoining Misa Pitlinzer’s property.
Miss Pitlinzer has not worn
woman’s clothing since she built the home. Except for the assistance given by
her Mexican neighbors she has cleared and cultivated the entire ranch alone.
She receives no callers, has no friends and lives as a hermit.
It is only rarely that Miss
Pitlinzer leaves the ranch. Her only companions are two large deer hounds,
which are with her almost constantly.
The animals act as a
bodyguard, and whenever a curious person attempts to reach the cottage the
onrush of the hounds soon causes the intruders to make a hasty retreat.
