The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1872-10-08
A Modern OthellO.
HE sMoTHERs HIS WIFE WITH A PILLOW

HE sAioTHERs HIS WIFE WITH PILLOW.
At festive social gathering in a country
house near Waverly, ILL.,, during the Christ
mas holidays of 1870, young farmer of the
neighborhood and the rural belle, who was
supposed to reciprocate his Partially for her,
attracted the attention of the company by
unequivocal signs of serious breach of good
feeling between them. The arrival of the
girl under the escort of an admirer whom she
had previously treated with indifference; and
the subsequent appearance of the yeoman
alone, and in apparently suen humor, were
the first occasions of surprise 10 the assem-
bled meIry-makers; but the wonder grew
more serious when, upon the fair coquette's
curt refusal to dance with her lately favored
swain, the latter denounced her in round
terms as afaithless flirt, and threatened to
cast her cavalier of the evening from the
nearest window. The insulted woman burst
into tears, angry words passed between the
rivals, and when finally the remonstrance of
older friends induced the furious farmer to
retire, the pleasure of all had been so effec-
tually destroyed that the whole company soon
broke up. What had caused the alienation
OF the lover, and this ensuing scene was new
er known to Waverly. Rumor explained it
in various ways, and speculative comment on
the subject varied until the spring of the fol-
lowing year, when the heroine was married
W OuC pcIeOu WHO udu DeHu uer companion
at the merry-making. From the night of the
latter, her so strangely discarded sutton new
er spoke to her again, and, soon after him
self married a young woman and moved to
Evansville, Indiana. Here he and his bride
lived in seeming harmony until toward the
Christmas holidays again, when dreary
change appeared to come over both of them,
and the few acquaintance they had made in
their new home believed that some secret
trOnhla had hafallar, l. Al:
preston remained, the young wife was found
dead in her bed one morning, of what a Cor
oners jury pronounced disease of the heart.
A foreknowledge ofthe fatal affection had, it
was thought, been the cause of the gloom, no
ticed in both husband and wife, and the for
mer, in his increased depression, received the
commiseration of those to whom he deigned
no other expression of feeling than an Obvi-
Gus desire not to be questioned about it.
There was mystery here. however, even as
there had been in the very different affair at
Waverly. The glum, uncommunicative wild
over moved again, some distance out of
Evansville, where, as the Journal of the lat
ter place, relates, he has recently died, liter
ally of broken heart and remorse, after
making startling confession to kind old
woman, who attended and soothed his last
hours. His wife, whom he had married
more from spite against another than from
love for herself, confessed to him, some
months after their marriage, that in the des-
perate hope of winning him back to his for
mer allegiance she had turned his late sweet
heart against him by managing to introduce
one of his old undated love letters to herself
INTO the envelope of a letter he had intended
for her rival, and pretending when called to
account by the latter, that the writer was
PLAYING THEM BOTH FALSELY
at the same time. She had interrupted the
true letter and changed it, with the results
above described. Her husband declared that
he would never forgive her while he lived and
warned her to leave him before hi. hatred
made him do that for which he would never
be forgiven. She did not heed his warning,
hoping, desperately perhaps, that her love
might yet plead for her; and according to his
own recent dying confession, he smothered
her to death while she slept. ~