Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1877 — Fory Years in a Cave. [ARTICLE]

Fory Years in a Cave.

AftnunTwitha moot remarkable hie. STUB'S ittSHSS Pike County, Pe . whet, be he. u!e7fo, was bora at Stony Creek, Ot, his parents being among ths “ best people” at the rtJ'age, He grew up to be a blacksmith, hsd a business of bis own. and prospered. When he was twenty-six he married the (laughter of a wealthy farmer, and idolized her ; but after a short time of happy married life, she died leaving him child, less. “ Then.” said the old man. “ everything changed with me. It wasoot in my heart to work, and I could not bear to associate with any one. I think I became, crazy. I cursed God, at any rate, andropenting in agonv, resolved to give the rest of my days entirely to Him.” For five years Sheldon was a wanderer, roaming through Connecticut and Mew York, shunning mankind, living altogether in the wilderness, bat constantly wandering. At length he determined to settle down where he could hold “ communion with God alone,” and he secured 100 acres of woodland on the Mooeic Mountain of Northern Pennsylvania, and there lived In a cave for ayear. But the lumbermen found him. ana, when Sheldon refused to sell, one of them brought his wife to the cave, offering her in exchange for the trees. Then Sheldon fled further into the wilderness and took up his present abode. Here in a half hat, half cave, just large enough to turn about in, with only the cracks in the stones to let in the light and give escape to the smoke from his stone stove, the hermit has lived for forty years. For ten years he did not see a human being. He trapped more than enough game for his needs; wolves and panthers howled about his den at night, and once he found a she bear in his hat and was forced to spend the night In a tree. Then game grew scarcer and he lived on roots and berries, once subsisting a week on a quart of dried raspberries, till he was driven to the settlements to Eick up work at making butcher-knives. A rather and sister from Connecticut Visited him not long since and begged) him to share their wealth and homo, but though the sister wept with him all - eight, bo refused. Hero, with matted hair and beard, with grimy, leathery skin, with feet wrapped in buckskin, and with clothing that has not been taken off for twenty years and whose rags are secured together with hickory withes and wire, the old man, now past seventy, means to spend his life, reading the Bible, that he has strapped about his waist, by day, and sleeping, as he has through all these years, in a rough, rootwoven chair.