Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1874 — A Pitiable Case of Destitution. [ARTICLE]

A Pitiable Case of Destitution.

Last Saturday, a lean, lank horse, drawing an old, rickety wagon, bright 1 have been seen going at a snail’s pace through one of our streets. In the wagon might have been seen the sunburnt, liungry-looking faces of a half-dozen children, and a woman walking bareheaded carrying a sick child. Two men and another woman completed the party. They passed through town and stepped in the lot just north of Grover’s grove, and the woman started out through town to make known their condition, and beg something to satisfy lhe crav-ngs of hunger. She told a pitiful story of poverty and want; how they traveled fron Kansas, having lost everything there, having their house burned, and that they were now trying to get to Chilieothe, Mo. When they arrived here they had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours. As soon as their condition was known a number of our good people sent them food, clothes and bedding, and a collection was taken up for them at the Presbresbyterian and Methodist Churches. Too much praise cannot be accorded to the good ladies who so generously assisted these poor people, and who sent them on their way fed and 1 decently clothed. They told a terrible tale of the suffering and destitution which prevail in Kansas, on account of the drought and the ravages of the grasshoppers, and thousands of people are leaving there and returning to this State and going further east. — Warrensburg (Mo.) Democrat.