Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 May 1875 — A Shadow of Twenty Years. [ARTICLE]

A Shadow of Twenty Years.

A terribly grim family tyrant in West Troy, N. Y, has just been left alone. He had been married to a good woman twenty years. The first ten years five children came into the homeland clouds and storms, and domestic terror.* The husband was in the habit of beating the wile shamefully, knocking her senses out of her, and then calling the neighbors and telling them she had fallen and hurt herself. lie succeeded in convincing the neighbors that she had fits and they believed him to be tender and kind. At one time lie had made arrangements to send her to a lunatic asylum, when an incident occurred which stopped these proceedings. She was sewing in her sit-ting-room one day when her husband came in, sneaked up behind her, aud with his fist knocked her senseless on the floor. The brute then went out to call the neighbors as usual. Bui one of them, a lady, was in the house unknown to him and witnessed the assault. Her evidence opened the eyes of the neighbors to the wrong in that house. They had the man arrested and tried. Before the court the woman told the truth about their domestic life, but, pleaded for the release of her husband, as she said she was the only sufferer and would try to stand her treatment. But the court sentenced the man to imprisonment for some mhnths. He said to her as he was -passing from the court-room to the jail: “I will never speak to you again on earth." That was ten years ago. He came out of jail and went home, but spoke no word to his wife. She spoke to him directly about family matters, and lie sent her messages by one of the children when it was necessary to reply. So she lived and suffered for ten more long years A short time ago the doctor and a preacher, who had been called, fold the man that his wife was on her deathbed, and asked him to give her a few happy hours before she died. He relented, went and threw himself on his knees at his wife’s bedside. He spoke to her, called her by name and asked her to forgive him. She took liis hand and forgave him. He left her bedside no more. Her last words to him were: “The last two days of my life have been the happiest, and I hope they will be the beginning of happier days for you.” An hour after she was dead. Can the man ever lie happy with the memory of that twenty-years’ shadow he made?