WILLIAM FISHER, second vice president of the C. F. Blanke Tea and Coffee Company, reported last night he received a letter yesterday from New York announcing that Arthur E. Nicholson, a well-known India and Ceylon tea merchant, head of the firm Arthur E. Nicholson & Co.. 128 Front street, New York, and an old friend, was a passenger on the ill-fated Titanic. 

Nicholson is well known to St. Louis Tea merchants, Who were expecting him to arrive in St. Louis in a few days, on his twenty-sixth annual tour. The letter, which by a strange coincidence was handed to Fisher just as he opened a book at a page containing a portrait of Nicholson, stated Nicholson had taken passage on the Titanic from London [sic] to New York and had undoubtedly perished, as his name was not among the list of those rescued. 

Nicholson was an acknowledged international authority on India and Ceylon teas, and was one of the seven judges who passed on the exhibits of that class and awarded the gold medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. 

Nicholson's home was in the Isle of Wight, where he spent several months of the year, and he was on his way back to New York to begin his annual spring tour of America for his firm.