The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1872-09-05
Dsnth in Life.


amusement and pity of social circles in
Portland, Oregon. was q young man
whose conviviai weakness neutralized
his every good i'll Ltention, and made him
a contempt to himself, and burden to
all who cared for him. With mental
capacity much above the average, and
moral sensibilities to keep alive his sense
of shame at his own degrading excesses,
the miserable young fellows career was
but succession of sore repentances and
renewed indulgences until his once COM
Portable home had become repulsive
with debt and despair, and his poor
young wife could have prayed that death
would claim both of them while it could
yet come without infamy. Reckless,
unprinoipled borrowing of money for
dissipation from the nearest practicable
possessor is one of the first as it is
! amongst the last signs of o character lost
to all honor and self-respect in the bru-
talization of dram-d-inking, and the
subject of this sketch had practised it
until the liberation of his most patient
victims was exhausted.
Thus it ensued that when one day in
his maudlin extremity, he applied to a
much-tried acquaintance for further
sum, and intimated that he should de-
stroy himself if his request was refused,
the hasty answer was
"Well, that is perhaps the best thing
you could do"
The words seemed to shock and arouse
the hapless wretch, as suggesting new,
awful, and prophetic idea. With a
CHASTITY smile, and frightened stare, he
muttered--
"That's SO, l believe you're right"
and turned away, partly sobered.
In an hour thereafter, at nightfall, he
was seen on the edge of the wharf.
People near at hand heard a heavy
| splash in the water, and word was sent
to the waiting wife at home that her
hapless husband had committed suicide.
In the morning the river was dragged
for the body, but not until a week fol-
lowing did the waves cast ashore the
disfgured remains which, to the eyes of
the near relatives only, had a semblance
to the lost drunkard.
A decent funeral came next, by grace
of Christian charity, and the weeping
and penniless widow was left alone to
battle with the world for livelihood.
In this she might have reached an early
grave herself, being wholly unused to
severe toll, but for the chivalry of a
friend, who, after exerting himself to
obtain employment for her, allowed his
interest to assume gradually deeper
character, and finally prevailed upon her
to become his wife.
So passed away from current record
the very. name of the first husband not
to find mention again until recalled by
a revelation of the last week.
The person whose final refusal OF
money to the importunate borrower had
been accompanied by such fatal words
and who had never forgiven himself the
utterance of those words, CHANGED to be
in Chicago on business lately, and was
greatly startled at noticing, in the fea-
lures of an humble workman upon one
of the new buildings there, an exact
likeness of the long-ago suicide of Will
lammette river. Noticing his involun-
tary start and stare, the workman un.
hesitatingly advanced toward him, with
extended hand, saluting him by name
The dead WAS alive again; the former
self-destroyer OF Portland, Oregon, wa,
now sober but prematurely aged brick
layer in the City of the Great Fire, ant
frankly confessed his identity before tn,
other could accuse him thereof. Dead
however, to his former unworthy self
and unworthily treated relatives, h,
wished still to remain, and would neve
resume his old name nor return to hi
former home. His wife must procure
divorce from him, and have her SECOND
marriage solemnized anew; as, in pre-
tending suicide, he had taken leave @
her, and all his other youthful associ
ations, as perfectly as though he hac
really died.
The idea of suicide, as suggested b,
his friends impulsive reply to his las
disgraceful importantly, had taken sucl
hold upon his conscience, that only
sudden hope coming to him as he wa
preparing to plunge into the dark waite
had prompted him to cast heavy stalk
into the tide instead, and then fly for
ever from the scenes of his past ignom
my and despair. 1t was well for thos
he left behind that the body of SOM
dead stranger, cast up by the wavas, wa
subsequently, taken for his own, ant
confirmed his mortal departure. From
Dalles by stage to Kelton, and from
thence by rail to Chicago, he had mad
pilgrimage into new 1fe-a life O
rigid self-control, penitence, and honest
if humble, toll in which, under ney
name, and far from all that he once wa
or ever again shall be, he has deter
mined to spend the remainder of day
vouchsafed to him in this world, an
strive to merit rehabilitation in the wcrl
Ito come.
"You need not reproach yourself fo
his old friend spoke regretfully of then
; I" for they only warned me in time c
what must have been my end if the
had not been said just as they were, an
then"