National opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1865-1874, 1874-05-08
A SUICIDES ROMANCE.
Weary OF Lift. end its Manifold sais.ri.


back it seems through the hal. f.forgottel
pathways OF human life How muol
Of the winding, devious way run
through desert, with here a bit Of i
half hidden in long grass with tall but
tercups, many ON stem, and there |
stretch Of sunny landscape; but thes'
are mostly long way off-at the begin
ing Of the pathway Sixty years ago
There 10 village in the midland coun
ties OF England that was q village sixty
years ago. II has not changed much il
the interval Fashion has not stoler
away its rurality I; business has MOI
robbed ii Of its retirement and peace
It is the village of Amesbury. In 1914
there was not one of all it's three or -four
hundred inhabitants unacquainted with
the rosy cheeks, yellow hair. and prat'
tling tongue of Little Tom Connolly,
old Tom Connolly the cooper's son, who
used to roll in the shavings his fathers
industrious arms accumulated in heaps
before the shed where all the wooden
churns, buckets, and tubs OF the vii.
lage found creation.
Those were the buttercup and sun
shine days of little Tom Connelly's life.
At two O'Clock on Friday morning an
old gray-hailed, pale-fsced man was
discovered by the police. huddled away
beneath q cart in Cherry street, New
York city, bleeding to death. It was
little Tom Connolly, life weary of his
plodding along the pathway that had
been desert for so long time.
There is nothing new, nothing very
startling in this miserable romance. It
is but an exempllfcation of what Sid
neySmith called then the tendency Of the
round peg to get into the square hole.
No doubt there was proper orbit for
Tom Connolly to revolve in, if he had
found it field of usefulness for him
where his brain power or his sinew
power would have availed to mold the
circumstances of his life, so as to make
life endurable to him, only he failed to
hit upon it. Times become bad in
England bad all over Europe, in fact.
Twenty years Of incessant warfare had
ground down the people with taxation.
There was glory and Apsley House for
Wellington, the ssvior of the nation
starvation and the workhouse for the
saved. Peace made matters worse
loaf of bread cost one shilling and two.
pence, land a mans hard days toll was
not worth a shilling. Evil days over
took the senior Connolly the landlord
and the tax-collector levied upon the
poor, humble mans shed out into the
wide world with father and mother and
BARNS, the highway or the ditch or
what not for the man who could not
pay. That was humanity sixty years
ago ! All this is changed now. Wit
ness Tom Connolly yesterday bleeding
to death from self-inflicted wound,
because he had no friends, no work, no
no home, and life had become
to him.
Men do not easily lose faith in life's
"To-day sad,
Tomorrow glad"
is creed that Hopes benignant lips
teach and all men willingly accept.
Tom Connolly was no exception. He
never married-he was too poor-and
there were but weak ties to connect
him with his native country. As best
be could he picked up his fathers trade
of cooper, and with that for capital and
his faith in life's possibilities for en-
,ouragement, came to this country
many years ago. He can tell of CLEANS
If comparative prosperity-the stretch
ss of sunshine are in his life's pathway
rs in every ones. The country in which
obor has it's dignity had welcome for
honest Tom Connolly who came to its
shores to work, but ill-fortune, false
friends, ill-health,, and old age, with
heir cumulative shadows of desponden-
", deepening and darkenipg into de-
'pair, have blotted out the sunshine,
md Tom Connolly, infidel to his own
'aith in hope, cut adrift from his creed
If life's possibilities, went out into the
darkness of the slums in this city OF
many homes to seek one in deaths GER
He may not die, but may
,ome forth from Bellevue Hospital,
where he has been carried, with o re-
,ewed faith in the possibilities of life.
Human kindness may yet find sunshine
or the close of his life.-N. Y. .Er-
press.