Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1876 — The Boy at Milford. [ARTICLE]

The Boy at Milford.

The telegraph has informed us that the y-outh, Jimmy Blanchard, alias Charley' lloss, who has been setting the St. Albans people mad for a week, has been finally identified by Mrs. Blanchard as her son, and that this identification is amply confirmed. The whole case is one of the most remarkable on record. It seems almost impossible that a child like the alleged Jimmy could for a week defy the closest cross-questioning of scores of persons, and never reveal by a word or a look his identity as the runaway Milford buy. Yet, so far as any sign of his was concerned, the boy at St. Albans was the missing Charley Ross and none other. If he had ever been anybody 1 else he seemed to have put the thought and remembrance of such fact utterly and entirely away from his mind. Every elfort was made to entrap him into a confession. “ Now, Jimmy,” said the Sheriff, “ I want you to tell me the whole truth about this business, and if you will I’ll stand by l you and be your friend and see that you are protected and taken care of. Now, you know your real name is Jimmy Blanchard. You live in Milford. This woman who is coming to-morrow morning is your mother. Here is Col. Crosby, a nice man and a prominent man in Milford, and he says he knows you and all about you. Now, he must be right and you mistaken, and I want you to tell me the truth about it.” The boy looked straight up in his face, as innocently as a child could, and said: “I have told you the truth. I never lived in Milford. The woman is not my mother. I never saw that man before, and my name is not Jimmy Blanchard, but Charley Ross, and Mr. Ross is my papa.” And so he insisted to the end. The boy’s story was greatly strengthened by 1 the fact that the overcoat and cap produced by the gentleman from Milford, and which the latter stated belonged to the Blanchard boy l , did not fit the waif at St. Albans, being a number of sizes too big for him. It is hardly strange, considering all the circumstances, that the people of St. Albans should be greatly 1 excited or that they should be indignant at the boy’s removal before his identity tad been absolutely and incontrovertibly established. Nor is it strange that they should regard the alleged sharp practice of the child as absolutely impossible in one so young. The idea that he had beeu educated to the trick by other and older persons was soon discarded, for what possible motive could inspire such an act? It was not to be supposed that the father of Charley Ross could be deceived, and upon such deception would necessarily rest the possibility of reward. If he had been taught his piece, too, he would have been weak in collateral matters, and would have been certainly caught; whereas this boy maintained his consistency throughout, and was never detected in a single slip. It is entirely 1 unlikely, therefore, that he had any confederates; and yet how a child like that could learn the long story of Charley 1 Ross’ abduction, with all its details, give accounts of travels and n descriptions of places which he had never seen, and still remember his statements so perfectly that lie could repeat them time after time,* without change or variation, is a marvel. And yet the evidence tends to show that the little rascal is the veritable Jimmy Blanchard, and the most precocious and unma'chable little liar in Christendom. Think of a boy like that looking unblushingly into the face of a man whom he known and met every day for years, and saying: ' e No, sir; I never saw you before!” And not with the guilty look of a liar or with averted face did this child say that to the Milford Postmaster, but with the frank and honest candor which would’ have inspired the real Charley Ross had he been placed in such a position. Such conduct is absolutely 1 inexplicable, and the general verdict will be that if the St. Albans waif is not Charley Ross he deserves to be.— Chicago InterOcean.

—The spontaneous generationists have found a hard nut to crack in some experiments by Mr. Worthington Smith. Tlifeexperiments of others have been to boil water, assume that no living germs could possibly feta in life 'under this heat, and then point to the living organisms tliatsabsequently appeared as a product of spontaneity. This view has been weakened by observations noted in these columns that the blue mold in bread appears after the spores have been baked. Now Mr. Smith comes with some experiments with spores boiied in hermetically-sealed tubes, which afterward came out alive and well. — X. Y. Independent. The Virginia City Ertierprite thinks that girls who study Latin and Greek and botany and all that", and then marry poor men, are certain to make good mothers and to bring np their children right.