Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1877 — Schoolboys' Cruelty. [ARTICLE]

Schoolboys' Cruelty.

Edward Joseph Gombers, aged thirteen, a delicate lad, the youngest sou of Mrs. Susan Gombers, a widow, of 308 South Second street, Williamsburg, died on Thursday of typhoid fever, which was incurred by a drenching in cold water, given to him by his classmates in Public School No. 19. In returning from school about six weeks ago, on a cold, rainy day, Herbert Peck, Charles Conklin and Frederick Woodworth took his umbrella from him, and pulled him under a stream of water which was flowing through the gutter of the wooden awning of a grocery. They held him while the water poured down his back. A crowd of idlers laughed at the grimaces the boy’s sufferings caused.* Edward Gombers went home drenched to his skin. He was seized with a fever a day or two afterward, from which he did not rally. Mr. Valentine, Principal of the school, publicly reproved the boys engaged in the cruelty, and spoke of young Conklin and Woodworth as “murderel’s.” He subsequently retracted the epithet at the demand of Conklin’s father, and apologized for using hasty language. Mr. Woodworth visited the lad with his son, and offered all the sympathy and aid possible, and Mr. Conklin directed his son to apologize to young Gombers and to visit him daily. The son, however, did not obey. For some days before his death Gombers was delirious, and piteously cried out, mentioning his playmates’ names, and asking them not to hurt him. He said frequently, “ Don’t let the water run on my shoulders; 1 don’t feel well." —N. Y. Bun. —lt takes six loads of brick, one thousand feet of boards, three wagon-loads of soil and a week’s work to make such a flower lied in the front yard as the average woman sighs for. — Detroit Free Press. —The sewing-machine agent, since the patent run out, has to talk just as much and just as fast, and tell just as manjlies for S2B as he used to tell for $135. Burlington Hawk-Eye. —M. Mangin, the celebrated French billiard player, recently made a run of four hundred and five noints in the threeball game, of which all but twenty-one were cushion shots. —Any citizen who so desires can now sign himself “Many Taxpayers” in his communications to the newspapers. The law forbidding it has been repealed.—Detroit Free Press. Is it a mere coincidence that a man in the habit of getting corned always looks seedy ?