Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1887 — The Turnkey's Story. [ARTICLE]

The Turnkey's Story.

“Say, Barney, you will have to put that hat away and get a white one,” said the venerable mikado to the reporter who attends the sin and iniquity of the city, as he sat copying the slate, where the old man in the course of his experience lias enrolled the names’of thousands of law breakers; Then the veteran lighted his long pipe and, tilting back in his easy chair, silently watched the wreaths of smoke as they curled about the solitary gas jet that threw its light over his basement office. Presently the old man looked up, and, after adjusting his spectacles said: “That hat of yours reminds me of a silk hat that was worn in here by a gentleman one cold winter’s night. Let me see, that was about ten years ago. it was a bitter cold night, cold enough to freeze a mortgage off a house. I was sitting here thinking of the many arrests that I had witnessed in the years since I first put on the Star—on April 7, 1851— that’s a long time ago, Barney—when the door opened and an elegantly dressed man walked in. On his shirt front sparkled a diamond and another and larger one glistened on his iinger’Js he removed his gloves. He walked carelessly up to the table, and, pulling from his pocket a handsome time-piece, glanced at it, then looked at me and said: ‘My good man, I am a stranger to you and am on a strange mission, and cc me to, you to see if you can tell me what I seek. Then he sat down, and, laying his silk hat on the table, pulled from his pocket a gold locket, w hich contained a tress of black hair. After looking at it a moment, he picked up the hat and coming over to my side, showed me the lock of hair, and a photograph which was pasted in the crown of the hat. It was the picture of a girl, with laughing eves and a bright, pretty face. ‘There’ said he, ‘is the picture of my sister, and as he spoke his eyes filled with tears. ‘She is now 35 years of age. She left home with an actor when but 16 years old, and we have never seen her since. Her father and mother are both dead, and grief’ hastened them away. 1 traced her from place to place, until about ten years ago, when 1 lost all track of her. Last week I heard that she had been arrested in this city, and I want to know if it be true.” “Well, I looked at the picture a minute, and 1 thought of how, but a few nights before, 1 had placed a cot in a cell back there with the original of that picture. She had been brought in by two officers so drunk that she could not walk. They had found her in a saloon on St. Paul street, and it had taken four men to put her in a cell. Despite the dissipation of the unfortunate woman, I could see traces of the girlish face in the hat, and knew that they were one and the same person. He watched me closely as I looked at the picture, and when I handed the hat back said, ‘tell me, do you recognize her?” He was in earnest and I told him all I knew. He thanked me, and as he turned to go said. ‘I feared it,’ and bidding me good Alight passed out into the storm. Well, he went and saw her in the penitentiary, but she never went back with him. She was past redemption. She married a worthless fellow, like herself, and «>»'’« -jxi She lives in the penitentiary about eleven months in the year. I afterward learned that her brother was a wealthy New York broker, but she would never tell me ,his # name. That's a true story, Barney, but ii’s a strange one.” And the old man refilled his pipt anil silently continued his smoking.