Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1879-01-24
THOMAS MASSEY.

We would not willingly let the name
of Thomas Massey, of Milwaukee, die. SO
far he has only gotten five lines in the
news columns, but the forms of Posterity
are not yet made up, and Posterity will
give him a whole page. There will be
honest tears shed for him. How plain and
unpretending the account of his heroic
sin Milwaukee on an intensely cold morn
sing to build fire, instead of making his
sswife do it, and was found an hour after
ssward frozen nearly to death in the yard,
s'where lie had gone for wood" We should
like to add something to this lest the
fame of Thomas Massey should pass away
with the cold snap. Without evidence to
the contrary, Of which there is none pro-
duced, we take it that Mrs. Massey was a
person in good health, and had made the
customary affidavit before the clergy aid
one or more witnesses to obey her hus-
band, and to cling to him through good
and evil report and through warm and
cold snaps, and we cannot believe that any
truly good woman, with this solemn obi
CATION hanging over her, would refuse in
any conceivable state Of the thermometer,
Or at least while there was any bottom to
it at all, to get up and have the fire
blazing ere the head Of the house arose.
The marriage ceremony is too solemn a
thing. too grave thing to have it's obi
cations lightened by the eXigencies OF the
thermometer, and we are prone to believe
that Thomas Massey would have only had
to say: Its seven O'Clock, my DEAR" o.
words to that effect, and his law-abiding
wife would have leaped with alacrity to
the task of raking the ashes out of the
stove. On that frigid and nearly fatal
morning twenty millions OF exemplary
| women in America did it, and will con-
tinue to do it until that final and fiery
morning when the end of all terrestrial
| things shall abolish -maklng-at least
in this locality.
| But there is no record that Thomas
Massey said one word, either about the
| weather, OF the propriety of having d fire,
| or indeed anything at all. We can only
infer that without the slightest reference
to the time Of day, or the affidavit made
by Mrs Massey, he showed his feet into d
pair of faded slippers given him in other
and happier days, and adjusting single
| suspender over his shoulder went boldly
| out into the back yard for kindling wood
and there froze. Leaving in the house a
wife who might have saved him. 1t is rot
| for the historian of this heroic feat to at
| tempt to manufacture circumstances that
| might have surrounded the noble deed
It is not for him to say that when Thomas
Massey remarked that it was seven clock,
Mrs. M. replied that she didn't care
if 1t was seventeen O'Clock, as good women
| forgetful Of their obligations have been
known to do; or that when he suggested
| that she had better make up the fire, she
replied that she would like to see herself
| doing tit is not, we say. for The historian
to conjure up such things as these, but
| simply to write the fact that a man with a
wifi at his command, got up himself and
nearly persisted in the attempt to make a
fire on a bitter cold morning.
Thomas Massey, if he has not survived
his injuries, is this day a Seraphim-or a
Cherubim at the very least. Mark our
words