Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1878 — A ROMANTIC STORY OF LOVE AND DEATH. [ARTICLE]

A ROMANTIC STORY OF LOVE AND DEATH.

“"The suicide of Capt Charles R. Power, of Somerville, committed Friday on the steps of his house on Rowe street, ends a personal history which had in it elements of romance as powerful as anything ever hatched behind the spectacles of Wilkie Collins. Elaborately worked up, it would furnish a fine basis for a novel in itself, or < a play for a theater languishing for something beside French adaptations and English classics. Many years 'ago Charles R. Power was a sailor lad of seventeen or eighteen years. With only his youth and good looks to advance his interests, he fell in love with a bright, attractive young woman, whom he met at a social gathering of the younger members of the Salem-Street Orthodox Church in this city. Her name was Amelia, and she was the only daughter and heiress of old Dr. Hollis, well known in the North End, and indeed throughout this whole neighborhood. The daughter was rich; the roving suitor was poor and without a profession; but loved smoothed out these inequalities. Miss Hollis fancied the young mariner, and when he left Boston in a certain memorable month at the age of nineteen, no prouder or happier mortal ever breathed on this mundane planet, for Amelia was his affianced wife and he was the First Mate of a Liverpool packet, a staunch and goodly vessel belonging to a strong firm and engaged in a profitable trade. This was the time when hotels lined our wharf streets, whose registers were never bare of the names of guests; when sailors’ boarding-houses prospered at the North End; when all over our harbor foreign flags floated at the peaks of trading vessels, aud the StarSpangled Banner could be found similarly unfurled in every civilized port of the then known world. There were no quarrels over the American registry of foreign iron bottoms, for it was long prior to the advent of competing lines of steamers, which have since reduced the ocean to a ferry crossing. The voyage to Liverpool was a long and weary one, but the lover’s confidence diminished the suspense he felt. His ship did not return immediately, but carried freight to various parts of Europe. In the meanwhile he received news from home, and learned that Amelia Hollis had given her hand to a gentleman whose acquaintance, it was said, she formed after Power’s departure. His grief and disappointment nearly crushed him. He left the sea, and for eight years led a wild sort of life on the Continent, got into horrible habits of dissipation, and propably permitted his passions to reign unchecked. After the lapse of this period of eight years ho straightened up, reformed his ways and determined to be a man. He shipped on a vessel bound for Boston, unable to resist the temptation of beholding the happiness of her who was to have been his. On nis arrival in this city he went to his old home, .visited all his old haunts and was as nice and exemplary a young man as you would meet between this and East Boston. His old associates gathered about him, and they attended social entertainments and led a gay city life. She heard of him, but they never met. Presently he grew restless again; the old feeling gnawing at his heart would not let him remainin Boston, and down to the sea he went again. The “briny" was his home after that. He crossed and recrossed the ocean, and in the course of a few years left Boston as Master of the good ship Archer. Years andyeark went by. This young man had become bronzed and grizzled and spoke in. a deep tone. He was still Captain of the Archer when twen-ty-five years had elapsed since his engagement with Amelia Hollis. One day, while be was at his lodgings in this'city, he received a letter in a woman’s handwriting, inviting him to meet her at the store of Crosby & Lane, at a certain time. The letter was not signed. The thought flashed upon him that it was from his old love, who, ill all these twenty-five year*, he had not forgotten. The wildest scene at sea had not dimmed her image in his heart, where he still carried it. He compared the handwriting with that in the letters of Auld Lang Syne, and had his suspicions developed into conviction. He visited the store at the .anacififid time, and there met her for the first time since they parted as lovers. After the greetings were over, and they had talked of their mutual experience during the quarter of a century, the lady informed him that she had been divorced from her husband. What he learned at that interview convinced him that she had always loved hfm, and that her marriage..was. not the result of any coldness toward him. Within three or four weeks of this meeting thev were married, and the long-delayed happiness of the Captain was realized at last They went to live at her father’s, on Salem street, but subsequently removed to Rowe street, Somerville. The lady was then the mother of two grown young people, a son and a daughter. The Captain had abandoned the sea at his wife's urgent request, and was without an occupa tion except that which the management of some property he owned in Colorado supplied him Wirh/ Flnally the doctor died and left a large sum of money to his daughter. The Captain’s family pjrole wm for some time after

this a happy one, but the want of a settled occupation at last produced Its invariable effects upon him, and shadows began to creep across the threshold of his comfortable home. The time came when a dreadful evil had to be acknowledged as forming a part of their married life, and incompatibility of temper compelled a separation. The Captain went to Colorado, and spent some weeks trying to' drown his unhappiness in the cares of property, but he failed,- and dissipation laid his hands upon him. He shook off the temptation, however, after yielding to it for a brief while, and, returning to the East, managed, after three months had passed, to effect a reconciliation with his wife. But 'the Cid evil again visited the household, and after long and iiwffectual struggles to destroy its influence, Mrs. Power suddenly left her husband aud took up her residence with her daughter, in Newton. Capt. Power at once fell into the deepest melancholy, a condition in which he remained intermittently up to thp period of his death. He met his wife on the street some months ago, and endeavored to obtain an interview with her; but her son, who accompanied his mother, possibly dreading a scene, tried equally {iard to prevent the interview. A pojeeman, who happened to be Standing by, urged by nis notion of duty, feft called upon to protect the lady, and compelled the desperate Captain to give up his purpose. The effect of this unsuccessful attempt at a reconciliation produced such an impression on.the Captain’s mind that his..friends considered him insane, and had him removed to the Asylum at Taunton. He did not remain here long before the fact of his sanity was established, and two or three weeks ago he was released. From that time until he shot himself Friday on the steps of his wife's house and his former home in Somerville, his comparatively cheerfal spirits induced his friends to believe that the weight of his trouble was lightened. He used to say that, if he could only secure a hearing with his wife, a basis of reconciliation would be established; but he believed that the last opportunity for anything of this kind had gone by when he committed the fatal act This was the ending of a romance which began in the old Sa-lem-Street Orthodox Church, and the incidental actors in the various stages of the melancholy drama are probably many of them still among us.— Boston Herald.