Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1874 — A Happy Family. [ARTICLE]

A Happy Family.

Tlie Sass PrancTsccrpTtpers-Aell—us of apoor Missouri family who found themselves perfectly' destitute - iu San Francisco, and also found friends iu the hour of their greatest need. Such incidents are pleasant to read of, and the recital always put us in a better humor with humanity, no matter how conteht and self-satisfied we may be. A poor man of forty or thereabouts, thinly clad and starved-lookiug, went to the wharf one evening and inquired of a 'longshoreman for a vessel going to Mendpeina. It was getting late, the man was shivering with cold, and a conversation ensued between the two poor men. The stranger said he was from Missouri, and had w ith him a family consisting of a wife and eight children. The wife and children soon came up; they were all shivering and starved-., looking. The man sakl lie had expected to find friends in tsau Francisco, but ascertained that they had gone to Mendocjna. The family had been obliged to sell all the clothing they had except the thin covering they had on, to buy food. - They- had no money and—no place to sleep, and the uiglit wind was coming chilly and cold from tlie sea. No vessel was going that night. The ’longshoreman was touched in a tender place! lie was rough, but lie understood human nature; saw that large, clinging family in distress. and took off bis hat and put his heart, and a dollar in it. lie carried round the hat among his fellows —all poor—and in a fßw minutes collected thirty dollars, which he banded to the distressed Missourian. The man was surprised and overcome with emotion. They would have a roof for the night and a comfortable bed to sleep in, and th e y .hail prbs pects for the morrow too. Memiocina was to them a promised land. A vessel would leuve~at nine o’clock in the morning. Maybtfdke Captain would be kind. They were up early’and on the wharf, but not before their friends of the •iglit before, who were there to finish up their work. The Captain had been seen, lie agreed to take tlie family to their destined port if they could feed themselves on the passage. Now it was all right. The 'longshoremen had attended to that. They had brought with them when they had come to their daily toil bundles'of clothing and baskets of food. Shawls, coats, pantaloons, shoes, etc., were among the stores which they-could spare, and which their wives had bundled up for them. Such tokens of kindness made the parents and their children cry for joy. The Missouri family went off on the schooner, and the ’longshoremen never felt happier in their lives. —St Louis Republican.