Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1875 — Touching Incidents of the French Flood. [ARTICLE]

Touching Incidents of the French Flood.

' J- : * ! A Pans letter says: “,The disasters caused by the inundations are still tbej most important items in our daily budgets of news, and there seems to be a sort of fascination in these dreadful details. Let me give an example of them: A baby in a wooden cradle was found floating down the Garonne, the little creature biping fast asleep and perfectly dry. There was nothing to indicate whence it caihe, and if the parents- have been drowned, as is supposed, the identity of this little waif may never be established. At Toulouse a laboring man, with his wife and baby five months old, were upon the roof of their house waiting for help, when a friend came floating down the current and managed to climb up beside them, ujfe was a good swimmer and thus kept himself above water. But in a short timette house began to crumble and suddenly fell, throwing the party in the water. The workman swam about for a mornent in search of the rest, but could not find them in the dark, and came to the sad conclusion that they had been crushed by the falling stones. He managed to save himself but believed the others lofct. In the morning he met his friend, who told him that he had saved his baby and had left it at the hospice during the night. The wife was drowned. The poor man ran so the-hospiee to ask for hist child. Immediately on receiving the little creatures, sbme fifty or sixty in number, thcy*had been stripped‘of their wef clothes,antl the clothing of all had been sent to be washed and dried. 1 No one thought of marking the clothing for the purpose of identification. Thefather tbund that all the babies of five months looked so nearly alike that’ he cotfld not pick out his own, and every day 1 since he has spent hours in the hospice* trying tq find which of the children saved belongs to him. ’ At one moment lie believes that instinct has guided him to the right baby; the next he picks out another and ‘then another, until he is himself confused I .' A mother wouTd doubtless recognize hee baby by many marks familiar to her,' bst It is not so easv for the father, who knows less of hils dhiftTs body than’ot’the Clothes it wears. :i Very many stories of this kindj are told, and sonie of them lire very totldh-r mg." v