Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1880 — 123On the Briak. [ARTICLE]

123On the Briak.

Am m MTW 1 mked*fbr V*Ssltor farter own poor emaciated aad absolutely woreout frame. Bhs did not wait under tbs fltnVjHnff rrmm Wit Ihfii to U 6 the step of the mansion and deposit her treasure there and then steel around.the comer to wait ibr the hand of God to touch the head of charity, and take the homelem one on* of the shadow. One might have found some kind of an exemw for this utterly homelem woman if ete had strangled the only living thing thet was lefther to lore—the only thing which to her was untainted—the on ly thing that existed to her to remind her thl °F**. 1 °?g: cenee. For her own life was so deeply buried under hopelessness and rin and misery that it is impossible lobe charitable enough to think that ahehadtte slightest recollection of her childhood. But her mother’s instinct remained. No storm ever washes that sway: no bitterness ever chßla it; no ingratitude ever hardens it It ie one of the typea which tea been given to men to prove the existence of* God. and it is higher sad holier, and contains s stronger appeal to prompt men to better things than ail of the theology and theories that can be dug out of the bible. She kiaeed it, and talked to it, and called it by some tender names. Maybe she sang to H a scrap of a cradle-tong. Beveral times she stopped passers-by and offered them the child, provided they would be kind to it ana she coaid come to it and love it Bat the passers-by had no time to consider her exactions, or else they had flowers of their own to care for and bestow their affections upon. Once a man did consider her appeal, looked at the lace of the child, which did not even then have a trace of reproach upon it, and questioned the woman. But she turned back from him, and walked away with her idol as if she could not give it an. She went down to the river, and walked nnder the shadow* of the naked masts that lined its decks like ghastly things in want. The night overhead was not ao cheerless as to be without its “grove of stars,” and these unwound their silver threads until they seemed to trail in the water and play with the lispings of the waves. But there was nothing else in the shadows except the church-steeples and the mansions of a city, and these were left untouched by the glow of the starlight, and contained no empty cradles. Once the woman untied the excuse of a bonnet she wore, and polled down her hair. She pressed the treasure in her arms and kissed it again. Then she came cloeer to the water, and looked into its depths. She turned back, coiled her hair, ana turned her face again to the streets. She met an officer, ana told him she was a vagrant. He hesitated as to his duty as a policeman, and then the duty of manhood came to him, and at the risk of being discharged, for an act of charity, by his chief he took the child in his own arms and led the wrecks of a life to the Madison street station, where be presented them to the captain, who also risked his position at headquarters, by sheltering two things, one of which was pitiful and the other helpless. This woman has been stripped of a fortune in lees than two year* by a trio of hardened wretches. She has been abducted and left utterly penniless upon the Canadian bolder. She has been chased from garret to cellar by a few men who, having robbed her of all that a home possessed; besides raining her daughter, who is at the bridewell to-day, have hnnted her -ight and day, in order to get her oat of reach of the court before which they will shortly appear. They have dragged her up ana compelled her to sign &D planner of documents which criminate herself They have used every device to steal her child. They have so poisoned the mind of her daughter that she curses the poor old wreck of a mother whenever they meet. Thev have made overtures to certain officials to have her sent out of the city. Maybe if they had made these overtones at the ‘‘proper place” and in the “proper manner they might hove succeeded. And now she is the most helpless and apparently God-forsaken creature that exists in the city. Bat this child, this waif that is being nursed in the shadows and under the mists of night, —“which is the proof of God, of etermty, and the duality of destiny” as some one has said, —forms one of those pictures of sorrow which are curtained by the darkness of evecy great city, which touch the chords of sympathy, and which make people question the Adore, and tremble