Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1874 — Bread Upon the Waters. [ARTICLE]

Bread Upon the Waters.

One day, not long ago, while an English merchantman was on a voyage in the Mediterranean, the Captain was called to the hammock of a dying sailor who had asked to see him. The invalid seafarer desired his commander to draw up for him a last will and testament, wherein the sum of $7,000 in English sovereigns was to be devised to a citizen of Memphis, in Tennessee, U. 8., and the uncontrollable surprise of the Captain in his performance of the request of the sinking man caused the latter to make the following explanation of the past circumstances enabling him to bequeath such a sum of money.- An Englishman by birth, he was a mechanic ih Memphis in the year 1861. No matter about the causes of his expa--triation and humhlc forcign occupation. Suffice it to say he had chosen to be a mechanic in America. Only for a short time, though; tor when the secession war began he enlisted in one of the Tennessee regiments, having been scarcely able to earn a living as an artisan, and being just recovered from a weary sickness of which he must have died but for the generous ministrations of a family of strangers. Shortly after the discouraged convalescent’s enlistment, and before his regiment marched further southward, he received from his family, in England the sum of $7,G00 in gold, which had been left to him by a dymg uncle. Instead of availing himself of this windfall, however, to withdraw from the army and devote himself otherwise than as a soldier, it was his eccentric whim to bury his whole treasure under a tree, in a lot belonging to the fentleman whose family had Been so lnd to him in his sickness, and to neither speak nor act as though he had ever received any such money at all. Leaving the gold thus secretly placed he marched away with his military comrades. Not long was it though before his eccentric character again displayed itself. Becoming speedily weary of the precarious fortunes of war, he deserted from the army into Mexico, and from thence embarked on an English vessel as a common seaman. Reaching England in due time, instead of rejoining his family there, he At once became a sailor oh another vessel for a voyage around the world, and had remained an obscure sailor until the fatal sickness overtook him in the Mediterranean and an expiring impulse of gratitude induced him to bequeath his gold yet hidden in Memphis to those who had so long ago befriended him in that city. Such was the strange, scarcely credible story which he told to the Captain in exolanation of his curious will; and, after signing the latter with another name than that by which he had been known on shipboard, he carried thej-emaining mystery of his career with him into the world of shadows.

The Captain hardly knew whether to regard either story or will as anything more than the diseased fancy of a madman, but, upon reselling port, mailed the document, as he had solemnly promised, to the address of the Memphis gentleman to whom the buried gold had been devised. And, according to a late issue of the Memphis Beg titer, that gentleman’s reception of the will, together with the Captain’s explanation of the foregoing circumstances, has been followed by a realization proving that the dying wanderer of land and sea spoke truly. Tne gentleman in question “had soma time before sold and delivered to another party the lot on which the valuable sovereigns were deposited. How to get at it now without incurring opposition and perhaps litigation was the question which arose in his mind. After taking the advice of counsel he concluded to develop the whole matter to the purchaser and owner of the place and asK for the right to make search. This was done, and the new proprietor generously forwarded hifl wishes and gave him every facility to possess himself of the treasure. On digging at the foot of the tree described in the will the gold, amounting to $7,000, was hapCily found and the new owner made glad y the glittering heap.” Who the departed giver or this little fortune was In his native personality is not known, and the secret is buried with him beneath the Hue waves of the Mediterranean,—* Nm York Graphic.