The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1858-04-15

dirty, narrow court, peopled by the lowest Irish,
When they arrived and inquired for the man. they
| were shown into q destitute room, without fire or
light, at the door Of which they had knocked. and
received no answer. When they approached the bed
. man spoke As il just awakening, and said in Ger
man:
been diving for a drink of water. l could not reach
my medicine, Olga, it is long past the hour. But,
poor wife. you have gone through much, no doubt
and have they paid you."
and light, while his wife gradually broke the news to
the husband. for he had not heard of his wife's arrest.
The neighbors were afraid TO tell it to a man so i'll.
He WAS lying wasted by a low fever almost 10 a skel-
ton. He seemed horror struck at the idea of his
wife's disgrace, and turning away frora the lady, he
wept bitterly. FIR m ejaculation, and fragmentary
sentences, she gathered that he belonged to a noble
family in some little German principality, and had
been obliged. on account of sympathy with Hungary,
to fly with his wife. They had expended all their
means, before they had been able to get any employ
menf, and since the failure of her husbands health,
the poor wife had struggled to support them both,
with her needle. He turned to his visitors again to
explain about the counterfeits. He said, the neigh
borhood and market people gave his wife bad money
repeatedly, thinking shrewdly that she, being a
foreigner, would not be likely TO know the true coin
well. When she ignorantly tried to buy things with
this bad money, she was harshly treated. Therefore,
when she had another gold dollar given to her, he
supposed she had shown it TO her ~neighbors to ask il
it were good, and had not been able TO make herself
understood by them. He had not seen her since she
left him to take home some shirts to Mr.. BIS furnish
ing store
innocent, and went at once to obtain the woman's
release, while his wife stayed and busted herself in
procuring comforts for the destitute invalid, without
consulting him at all about it, for she saw that his
proud spirit rebelled against receiving as charity even
the means of prolonging life.
1t was not long before her husband returned and
never was there a sadder or n tenderer meeting than
between the sick man and his liberated wife. AL
though medical attendance was procured, and every
comfort placed about him, the sufferer died that
night, blessing with his last words the lady who en-
abled him TO have the comfort of his wife's presence
in his last dark hour.
The lady herself. however, felt keenly selfcon-
demned. She told her husband the whole story,
shedding tears of pain.
"what a dreadful chain of sin and sorrow I have
occasioned, . she said.
- do not think you were TO blame her husband
replied, for you only left the dollar to be given to
the true passer of it."
"Oh no l was almost sure the market woman
would not be particular. l thought she would get
rid of it the first chance she had Yet [ said, that is
no concern of mine. 1t was an Indifference TO right
which has had IL force of intentional wickedness.
See what a series of sins | have occasioned. The
market-woman gratifed her revenge first, and did a
dishonest act besides; then that hateful ~hypocrite
put il into the poor fund in misunderstanding in the
very temple. The moment his wife spoke of his con-
tribution, I saw detected guilt in his face, but he told
more falsehoodsIhe pretended he did it by mistake,
and thHt he would make II up Then the ministers
wife, over-tempted by poverty to be dishonest oh,
what agony il will always be to her to remember it,
and to me to know that I occasioned it. And then
the starving, innocent German lady, who came near
being deprived of her husbands last kiss, and who
endured hours Of misery, knowing that he was suffer-
ing in her absence. Oh, husband
One i'll deed
Sows countless seed.
CT shall never forget this lesson. Pray God that
every one of my sins of omission may not be followed
by such a train of mischief"
To be reminded of her fault. the lady had the dol
lar set in a plain bracelet, and wore it constantly
upon her arm. Every day the base coin left a green
mark from corrosion, anil, as she washed it off, she
thought how blessed it would be if the consequences
of sin could be as easily effaced. But that, she knew
by experience, could not be. In the three days since
she had first been careless of the right, the dollar
which she had suffered to slip through her fingers,
had brought sin or unhappiness to herself, the two
hucksters, the hypocrite, the minister's wife, and the
foreigner. They, none of them, would
ever during their whole lives, escape from the conse-
quences of her culpable neglect, in not stopping the
of that counterfeit dollar.