Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1889 — By Chance. [ARTICLE]

By Chance.

One of those incidents which present a truth stranger than fiction occurred, not long ago, in a New England State. An ajnateur photographer, wandering about the country in search of material for his camera, came upon a deserted farm-house, dilapidated and picturesque. Just as he had arranged his apparatus to take a photograph of the house, the front door was opened, and a man appeared from within. The contrast between his trim appearance and the general air of decay about him only heightened the effect. “Stand where you are,” cried the artist, “and I’ll take your picture.” The man complied, and the picture was taken. Then the two men, approaching each other, fell into conversation, and the one who had appeared in the doorway explained his presence there.

“I’m just on from the West,” he said, “and father and mother wouldn’t be satisfied to let me come till I promised to look up the old homestead. They left it before I was born, and it has passed into other hands and fallen into decay, as you see, but there’s nothing they wouldn’t give to set eyes on the old place once more. So I’ve been prowling about, in every hole and corner, from garret to shed, in ordeY to answer all their questions.” “We can do better for them than that,” said the artist, struck by a happy thought, “If you will give me their address, I will send them the photograph I have just taken, as soon as it ■can be finished.”

The young man w-as, of course delighted, and, a little later, the “old folks at home” were still more so, for one morning’s mail brought them a photograph of the old house, sorely changed but still precious, and in the doorway of it stood their son, for whom they had begun to “weary” during his long absence.