News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1886-09-23
THE LEGEND OF RHODY.
"Gnth" Muses. Upon the Old Story of Mrs
Kate [ base Sprague and Husband.

As l rode along the shore and saw fine
villas spreading for three miles, till the
price of land has advanced in twenty
years from $50 to $500 an acre, 1 re-
f1ected upon one couple. the king and
queen OF this realm, who had thrown it
away and enshrined themselves in it
for an everlasting scandal, like pair of
dead flies in the precious amber fshed
from the Baltic. William Sprague was
Governor of Rhode Island; Kate Chase
was the daughter of the Chief Justice Of
the | nd. When the statue of Oliver
Perry, who lived three miles from Mar
ragansett Pier, was dedicated at Cleve-
land just before the war, Sprague with
his troop went on there and Governor
Chase's daughter went also and was in
troduced to him. Neither was perfec-
bility, but there ensued a passion
where social consideration added its
subtle heightening, like Bonaparte
leavi G his warm queen for the distilled
quality OF the apsburg's child princess.
He went into the war like gallant boy,
the down barely on his lip; she set up
a social rivalry to Mrs. Lincoln and was
the viii moth of her fathers ambition
which burned intensest when his wick
was at the socket. When she became
Mrs. Sprague he had nominal V six
million dollars and was pursued by
ever schemer in the land and sat in the
American Senate She commence
Narragansett, and in twelve years more,
from their domestic castle, her own son
aided his father to drive her parasite
from its gate with shot gun.
Now that father and that son are
married to Il pair of sisters extraordi
nary juxtoposition, yet not illegal and
the estate of four hundred acres and
the great house of Canonchet may 90 to
thi unknown, unsocialiZed family,
while the bride of history is digging up
the bones of her father as her last his
torical possession. 1t is a legend of
Narragansett that sometimes the coast
guard on the shore finds, in the freezing
night, a man down by the sea staring
insensibly, preternaturaly, at the storm.
But if this be tue, it has the dignity of
Lear about 1t. " here is the dignity of
Regain and Coneril? Two women live
on the spectre side of society; both
wived at different times to this same
broken man. and the son of the first is
the stepson and brother of the second.
The society which admits the semi-de-
tached actress rejects the family of
the chief public and business men
Rhode Island probably ever had.
Across the narrow bay YOU see Oliver
Perry's niece, the vile of a Hebrew
foreigner, vet near the capsto e of so
CT ty. Why! Because in the one C sc
domesticity was real and in the other
was mockery. The angels stood by
one union, and mammon and notoriety
stood by the other. "For rich or Tor
poor, till death do US part, continue
to be the solemn memory of that early
vow, and man and wife live abreast of
each other in our times, like parallels
that never can separate as they go
around the globe, yet never can meet
The Sprague case will be a notable his
torical fable rs long as Rhode Island
stands, and the chances lean iowa DIS
the man being its hero, wilful as he has
been. The test of hero or heroine is,
which has most suffered, not which has
least erred.