The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1882-08-11
A ROMANCE.


| this city and some of its early settlers:
Fifteen years ago when ST. Paul was a
much smaller place than it is now, an hon
| est, hard working Bohemian named Frank
| Kohout came here to live He was ac-
companied by his wife and seven small
children, two of them being boys and the
rest girls the oldest of the girls Antonio,
being IL years old The children were all
pretty, and Antonio gave promise of devel-
| oping into perfect model of feminine
| beauty. Kohout was devoted to his fam
| lily. and, not wishing to see them in want,
| took the first work he could find, which
was IN the capacity of deck hand on a
| steamboat. The name of the mate under
whom he shipped was SHELTON shelton
had wife and family in Rock Island. BY
| a chance the eye of Shelton fell upon the
| beautiful Bohemian girl Antonio, and he
| resolved to kidnap her. 1t amounted to
| nothing else, as this history shows, and
| deserves no better name, for it was through
the work of Shelton that Antonio was lost
| to her family for fifteen years and finally
given up as dead
Shelton took advantage of Frank
Kohout's ignorance of the English Ian
guage, and through an interpreter induced
him to part with Antonio, under promise
to procure her comfortable home with
family in Rock Island, who would rear her
as one of their own, and give her the bene-
fit of a good education. In the simplicity
of his heart Kohout intrusted the little
girl with the mate, who took her TO Rock
Island and placed her in charge of female
music teacher of a most ungoyernable tenn
per- The music teacher had a daughter of
her own, whom she treated we'll enough,
but it was not so with Antonio. The
IN w.t. .NFtI h.
week merely to make her forget her native
tongue; but after school hours, when the
other children would be taking recreation,
she would be compelled to mental work,
and would receive harsh treatment, no
matter how faithfully she might perform
the ardueus tasks assigned her.
Antonio grew homesick, and whenever
Skeletons boat came in she would search
him out and plead with him to take her
home. Meanwhile Autonias father was
missed from the boats crew. The mate
seemed, all at once, to get IN a dilemma re
garding the betrayed little girl, and after
making and breaking promises to take her |
home, he disappeared from Rock Island |
and his family with him.
The child was at loss what to do. She |
urged her cruel mistress to write home for |
her, and received lying assurances that her |
letters, purporting to have come from her |
parents were read to Antonio, and bogus
promises made to send her home. One
day her mistress struck her in the face.
This was little too much for the sensitive /
creature, and when night came on Antonio
slipped away in the darkness and obtained |
employment in the family of a jeweler.
She still sighed for home, and wrote three
letters to st. Paul, but they all came back
to her from the dead-letter office and this
led her to believe that her parents had
given her up and gone back to Europe.
She knew they were poor, unacquainted
with the English language. and in every
way untitled to institute a systematic
search for her. AS for her, it had been
years since her own language had been
spoken in her hearing, and she had entire
ly forgotten it. An arbitrary rule of the
Bohemian tongue changes the spelling of
names when borne by female members of
a family by adding an extra syllable. Thus
the name OF Kohout, when signed by any
female of the house, is spelled KohOutova.
With this popularity of Bohemian gram
mar Antonio had never been made &C |
Qualnted and it was natural that she |
should follow the English idea and |
address her father by her name, which was
the only fragment of Bohemian that she
could remember and that imperfectly.
Hence she left vowel out of her name,
and ia every attempt to discover the
whereabouts of her father addressed him
Kohstova. This was her own name,
spelled Theoretically from memory, but it
was not the name of her father. There
were no Bohemians near to enlighten her,
and her hope of finding her relatives burn
ed low in her heart But did not entirely
die out, though her family continued to
live in ST. Paul all the while without the
means of communicating with her.
Antonio left the jewelers. family and
lived with an Irish Catholic priest, Father
Roles by name, for two or three years.
The good father seemed to take an interest
in her, and had her educated by the Sisters
of Mercy. She next lived with the family
of Mr.. Peck, railroad man, where she
met Mr.. w. w. Smith, of the Rock Island
railroad, who took great fancy to her,
and who wooed and won her seven years
ago. The union was blessed with two
children, Ira and Katie, aged respectively
) and years with difference of fifteen
months between their ages.
To crafty his wife, though with small
hope of success, Mr.. Smith came to st.
Paul in search of his father in-law. The
city directory, of course, could not have
been blamed in this instance had he failed.
Luckily, he ran across police officer who
knew Mat Jelinek and 10 Kricek These
men were acquainted with Frank Kohouts
son-in-law, Frank Kriha, who works at