The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-01-06 00:00:00

ALMOST TOO OBLIGING.

The general feeling of uneasiness excited by the number of
Enoch Arden/ who have reoeutly turned up will lint he
lessened by an event which has just happened In Miasouli,
and is thus related by the Ciaciunati Eng ttirer

A one-armed -horseman, lately travelling through
Missouri, stopped at a blacksmith's shop in Cedar
City to have his horse shod. The smith noticed his
emptyideeve, and asked him if he had lost his arm in the
war. He replied with a sigh that he had, and addedwith
niuch emotion that ongoing back to his home at the close
of the was' he found that his wife, who thought be was
dead, had moved away, laid he had since been unable
to obtain a trace of her. " What is your name? "
asked the blacksmith. "J. M. Waldrup," was
the reply. The smith suddenly released the hoof
of the horse over which he had been bending, and
without looking at the ex-soldier, cried, "Follow me
into the house," and hurriedly led the way.
Waldrup mechanically obeyed the unexpected
bidding, and was ushered into the presence of a
comely matron, about whose sewing chair three happy
children were playing. She was the blacksmith's wife,
the mother of his little ones, and rose to ;Jett the
stranger on his appearance with her husband at
the door. No sooner, however, did she catch sight
of his face than she uttered a h-iartrending shriek
and fainted. In Waldrup she retis'mised her hus-
band. In the firm belief that he had been killed
in the war she had married the blacksmith of Cedar
City, and was already the mother of three fine
children. After the first agitation of the assembled
group had subsided, Waldnip and the smith retired to
the smithy to talk the matter over. Devotedly as the
smith loved his wife, he fully admitted Waldrup's
superior claims, and it was in the end decided that She
herself should decide between them. They accordingly
returned to the sitting-room where, after a torrent of
tears and self-reproaches the wife came to the co. -
elusion that she ought to return to her first husband.
Suddenly dropping her head, however, on the black-
smith's shoulder, she declared with hitter lamentations
that she could not leave her children. The smith'
"eyed her wistfully " for a moment, and then said, in
a husky voice, "you shall take them, my dear." Some
hours later, when the steamboat St. Luke stopped
at the landing, Waldrup went on board with his
"thickly-veiled and still weeping wife," and the black-
smith followed, leading the children. The boat's bell
rang for the startirg. The dread moment of separation
was at hand. The captain, the crew, and the passengers
were affected to tears at the tAtching scene. "With
great drips rolling down his tawny cheeks," the smith
kissed the children one after the other and bade the
mother an eternal goodby. He then shook hands long
and earnestly with Waldrupt and walked quietly to
the shore. He never turned his face towards the boat,
which soon passed out of sight, but strode on with head
bowed down to the home where the voice of his wife
and children would welcome him no more. Let us hope
that his grief was sincere.