Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1874 — Romance of an Organ-Grinder. [ARTICLE]

Romance of an Organ-Grinder.

On a corner curbstone in Atchison, Kan., sits an aged woman turning a handorgan and watching for the straggling pence that thoughtless children or benevolent men and women may toss into her lap. A very sad story is the history of the old woman’s later life. Less than a year ago she dwelt in a German city with an intelligent, promising family of three daughters and a son. Their circumstances were fair, and they were all happy. Kathrina, the eldest daughter, had a lover who had some time previously come to America to lay the foundation for the future prosperity and bliss of his Kathrina and himself. As is not unfrequently the case, honest merit received its due reward, and the young man did well in the land of his adoption. When he thought the proper time had. come he returned to the Fatherland for his sweetheart, to bring her back his bride. In their humble obscurity Kathrina and her people had lived lovingly together and were loth to separate; so they all determined to come to America together. The young man espoused Kathrina, and the mother and son and remaining sisters prepared to cross the wide sea. They took passage on the Ville du Havre. The rest may be imagined. The young husband and wife sleep at the bottom of the ocean, and the widow’s son and daughters went down with the others, and she alone of the little circle was picked up. She suffered, a maniac, in a New York mad-house for a while, then went forth friendless, desolate and poverty-stricken, yet struggling to increase the tenure of her miserable existence by a few years or months or days. And she sits an the curbstone daily, half-witted and half-fed, grinding away. — St. Louie Republican.