During the reign of Queen Victoria, a London doctor visited a 72-year-old lady named Maria Vincent. Her husband had abandoned her some years earlier. She was poor and lived in very humble surroundings. She was undernourished and had neither warm clothes or wood for a fire. The doctor couldn’t believe her friends would allow her to live like that. When asked about it, Maria said she had no friends. Later in the discussion she corrected herself. She admitted that there might be one, but was sure that she had forgotten about her. The doctor pressed her for the identity of the friend. And finally Maria told him that it was the Queen herself. She said that the two of them had been childhood friends.
The doctor left, not sure that he believed Maria, but when he got home he wrote the Queen a letter relating the incident.
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