His Pension Case Rejected

Washington. Nov. 23. - A pension claim which has been pending' twentyseven years and which is admitted would carry back pay of $25.000 was decided by Assistant Secretary of the Interior Davis. It is the oase of Gotlieb Ellerslck of Missouri, whose claim for allegéd total blihdness due to disease of the eyes contracted chiring military service In 1864 is rejucted. The case has attracted much interest and presented many perplexing features, but it was found that no record Of the existence rf any disease of the eyes in the service existed. nor was theie competent testimony to show the incurrence of any such dlsabllity in the service. The claimant was discharged from the army in 1 ís t; T. and did not lose nis sight till 1S6S. Xo eftort to establish his claim, presented in 1870. was made until 1890, twenty-flve years after his discharge, when most of those who cnuld have testified from personal knowledge were dead. The (Jecisio-fi holds that the claimant's own statements were inconsistent and flatly contradictory of his most important witnesses. aside from which the physicians and ocenlists decline to accept the case of his present biindness as due to any service origin.