Connecticut western news., 1883-05-02
A WELCOME BACK.
A Little Advice to Man Who Had Just
 Got Out of a Very Bad Scrape.
From Peck's Sum-

From Pecks Sum- Readers of the Sa1e far away from Milwaukee, will be as interested as those at home in the result of the trial of George Scheller, indicted by a Grand Jury on charge of setting fire to the Newhall House, by the burning of which over seventy lives were lost The partic- ulars of the fire, and the arrest of the alleged incendiary, have been known to all of the reading people of this coun- try, and the prisoner has been convicted i'll the minds of many people, on the cir cumstantial evidence published by the papers, and commented on by the peo- pie. The case has been tried, and while circumstances, many of them, looked very peculiar, the prisoner has been &C., quilted, His own testimony, con- nected with that of the prosecution. showed that he was in front of the hotel, drunk and almost on the verge of delirium, but few minutes before the fire broke out and he will likely admit that he was a big fool to be in that con- dition. The jury brought in verdict of ''not guilty" and George Sche Her is a free man, it is hoped with more sense than he ever had before. Many who have watched the trial, and have
 
 result of his getting drunk, will be in- terested to know where the acquitted prisoner went to when he emerged from the court room.
 Did he go to the saloon and the gam bling room, where he had been so much before, and drink and gamble, or did he go to his home, to his patient, cheerful wife, and beautiful, loving children, and "a VxIn lot NR IL | never hugged his loved ones before? As an impartial historian, we must say that | he went home, and if after this experi- ence, he does not quit drinking whisky and playing poker, and become the man he has right to be, then he ought to be brained with blown-up bladder. Here is 8 man who had been one of the best hotel clerks and bookkeepers in the West, deposed from one position and an- other, and then going into the saloon business and being his most capacious customer. A young man not much over thirty, handsome, 8 favorite with all, and better capable of keeping first class hotel than half the landlords, drinking whisky until he stuttered, sitting up nights till he couldn't rest day times, and l getting lower every year, until friends who knew him when he was George Scheller, couldn't believe he was the same boy. And when the fire came. and all ears were filled with the walls of the burned victims, and the whole city was 8 morgue, and a funeral with forty cof- fins at time took possession of the streets, and there were tears in every eye, and revenge in many hearts, was it strange that people should point to the whisky in George Scheller, and shake their heads, and lay the catastrope to the whisky?
 No man who knew him believed that he would harm the hair of any persons head, but many feared that the demon that he had concealed about his person had done this deed. Twelve men. good and true, have said that he did not do it., and now let his experience be lesson not only to him but to every young man, to let whisky alone. If every drop of the accursed stuff could be sunk so deep that all the suction pumps in the world, with all of the fire hose ever made, could not draw up enough of it to make whisky sour, every man. woman and child would be better off. the traffic, if he has an appetite for it, and he shouldn't anyway, for he may acquire one. Whisky, and nothing else, has come so near getting this man lynched that there was no fun in it. If he has got sense, and has any regard for the prayers that have been uttered for him, and the tears that have been shed for him, and if he can see, through the mists that have blinded his own eyes, the wondering look of his little chil- dren, who have so eagerly inquired why papa did not come home, so many times during his long confinement in jail, he will never look upon whisky again, and never handle it with the tongs. He has got money enough. or can get it, to go into business that will honor him, and which he can honor. and THE SUN bids him welcome back to the friendship of the sober, the industrious, the success flll business men.