Southport telegraph. [volume] (Southport, W.T. [i.e. Kenosha, Wis.]) 1840-1850, 1842-02-01

THE CONDEMNED FoRGER AND HIS WIFE.-The
following beautiful and thrilling sketch is copied
from FraZer's (London) Magazine:
The forger had been convicted, and condemned
to suffer the dreadful penalty of death. His wife
sensitive and accomplished lady, although
the wife of telon. An hour had been appointed
for the last earthly interview. Pale and trembling
the wife with three children entered, to them, the
tomb of a living being, who had been their only
love and hope In this world: he whose solctude to
ensure their happiness was the cause OF their mise
ry. After absence, it is natural to rush into the
arms of those we love; but disgrace and consequent
shame make strange havoc with the impulses OF the
heart.
$40 you forgive me, Maria?'' said the husband
keeping aoof from his wife, if his touch would be
pollution
Would that others could as readily forgive ?"
replied the agonizing wife, sinking seat near to
her.
''Ah, you mean Godl All, have you prayed for
me, Maria! Do you think there is a hope for me!
Speak! | have been great snner-a wicked
sinner Maria. Yet do not tell these, your chill
dren, what bad man their father But where
fore are they here? Is not my punishment sutfi-
GENTLY heavy without bringing my children to re-
proach me!'
The jailor reminded the bcwildercd man that he
had expressed wish to see them.
"Ycs-true!' he calculated, - but have been
mad and have not recovered my senses. Maria,
your husband is mad -
Maria heard him not, she was living senseless on
the floor. The children, aged six, and eight, and
ten, were crying over her, thinking that their I'M
happy and evidently distracted father had been the
cause of her death.
Both husband and wife had thousands of ques-
tons to ask, and more matter to communicate, but
the interview was ended. Several hours elapsed
before the wife was restored to perfect conscious
lat in he hptO her
doomed husband could be brought to resume the
preparations for his fate that awaited him the
following morning. "Shall not see him once %
inquired the wife, she slowly recovered her re-
collection, ''only once more-only one look! am
now prepared and can command my feelings
This privilege denied her, as such inter-
views rarely answer any purpose but to distract the
mind OF the whose business it is to forget the
world and all It's attractions, and to agonlze all the
feelings OF the other, who stands in need of all the
resolution she possesses to sustain the calamities
attendant upon catastrophe fatal to his worldly
prospects.
1t was evening before the wife and her children
could be conveyed home the latter while at the
prison and on their road asking their agonized
mother number of questions regarding their fa-
Their, every one OF which penetrated the soul and
caused her further anguish. lt the first time
the subject of death had been forced on their atten-
ton, and they were too young to have anything but
confused notion of it, now they had learned that
their father was doomed in few hours to meet it
before the public gaze. In all these cases. the truth
is that the wife and children of the offenders are
the only parties really punished. Even the hang
ing itself falls with heavier weight of suffering on
the senslbtles of an attached wife than it does on
the culprit, whose sense of pain has termination.
The WIFE tortured with the scene of strangulatiOn
on her Imagination, in vain, when worn out with
distress of mind seeks repose: the excited and de-
ranged nerves keep the fancy at work she dreams
that they have laid her dead husband, cold and
clammy, by her side and awakes in terror at be-
ing SO near one whose absence a short time since
was her only trouble. The hours, as the morning
approaches, counted; then minutes are watch
en-. The fatal period arrives; she sees the signal;
hears the drop fall feels the jerk; the sensation of
choking; and swoons, again to revive to the con-
seriousness that all is desolatlon and misery around
her.