The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1869-05-20
From the New York Tribune.
Running Away.


mystery has recently been brought
to light by the discovery of a missing
American ge ntleman in London. The
everend Mr.. Spike, it will be re-
u embered--a broher of the African
xplorer-left comfortable English
home without assignable cause, and
after Great Britain had been for weeks
in turmoil over his disappearance,
was discovered in distant part of
the kingdom, disguised as droyer.
He seemed to be sane, and no salts
factory explanation of his vagary was
ever made public. The American case
is strangely similar. Mr.. Edwin R.
Cotton, agent of the Adams Express
Company at Springfield, Mass, left
the house Of friend in Fifth-st., New
York, on the goth of December, 1867,
and from that time all trace of him
was lost. His accounts with the
Company were found to be correct to
the last cent, and no motive could be
conjectured for his voluntary disap,
pearance. All available means to
find him were exhausted. At last
on the goth Of April, 1869, an ac-
quaintance met him, dressed as sail
or, visiting the Tower of London.
He gave a history of his adven-
lures, but no explanation of
his sudden, desertion of wife, friends,
and country. The day Of his disap-1
pearance he had taken passage for
Glasgow under an assumed name.
He wandered about England for sew
eral weeks, and then, shipped as 9
seaman on board a vessel bound for
San Francisco. Thence he sailed to
Calcutta, and from Calcutta to Lon
don. He knew of the excitement
caused by his disappearance, but ex-
pressed no intention of coming home.
Of course there may be circum-
stances both in the Spoke and the
Cotton case which have been conceal
ed from the public; but why should
we doubt that sane men are driven
sometimes, by an impulse they can
not explain or analyze, to break out
of the routine of a monotonous life
and plunge into anew world ? When
knighthood died, the vague unrest Of
chivalric adventure survived. When
the anchoritism of the desert went
out of fashion, there still remained In
the human bosom that yearning for
solitude, that irresistible desire to-
break away from the beaten path,
which sometimes drove men to flee
from family and friends into the soli-i
trde of the Thebaid, or the seclusion
of the monastery. AS the world
grows older, we walk more and more
closely in one another's footsteps
the grooves get deep and it is hard
er to escape from them. But every
now and then impulse gets the better
of reason, and grown men, respecta-
BILE clergymen, fathers of families,
play truant like school-boys, and per-
haps hardly know themselves why
they do it, or what they run away
from, unless it be the wearying necess-
ity of repeating tomorrow just what
theydid yesterday and to-day. When
we are puzzled over mysterious disap-
pearances it would be wise to remem-
Der how often people do strange things
without any distinct motive,-do
them, in fact, merely because they
are strange things, and they are tired
of being reasonable. If such men
had been differently placed in life
they might have won fame as daring
pioneers or adventurous explorers.
Mr.. Spoke, with. his brothers oppor-
tunities, might have opened another
wilderness Mr.. Cotton might have
1 been second Capt. Cook. But ac-
@cident--which is only another name
for Providence-made the one clerk
and the other curate, and so they
are likely to be remembered Gf they
are remembered at ally as "queer''
persons, of whom it may be an open
question whether they were a little
o..Il - = 1;Atlo xu3oGo5 va M