Connecticut western news., 1889-11-20
A DESERTED WIFE.
A PENSION EXAMINERS STORY OF
 LOVE AND HOPE DEFERRED.
Wanderings of Devoted Wife in Search
 of a Fiokel Soldier Husband.

The following pathetic story was related by an ex-pension examiner to Denver Republican reporter, among other "reminiscences of the Civil War:
 "In the village of Hoopeston, Hi nois, two years before the war, there lived an cratic, devil-may-care sort of fellow named -. He was care less, go-easy sort of benedict, very fond of the pretty girl wife he had just welded, and yet one of the kind of men who figure as unfortunates in light comedy.
 "He and his wife lived in a cottage that belonged to her father, and while she sewed and sung, he put in his time hunting and fishing. Now and then he did an odd job of carpenter work, and it seemed there wasn't better workman in Hoopeston than he.
 "When the war broke out he enlist ed, and one June morning he kissed his wife goodby. He tried to comfort her by saying he would he back. in 8 few months and would work harder than ever then to get along.
 "But his wife fell sick and refused to palt from him, so he got a short leave of absence, and, taking her to 8 St. Louis hospital, left her there and went to the front.
 'sFor months she lay in the hospital. Finally she grew we'll enough to go out to work, but no word ever came from her husband. She refused to be- lieve what the attendants told her, that he was dead; so she drifted up and down the river, selling apples on the steamboats, visiting hospitals and army camps until she became known all alon g the river from Cairo down to Vicksburg and to the armies of both sides. Everywhere her story was known, and many were the enquiries sent out among the boys as to the where abouts of the missing man.
 ssBut it all was in vain. He was as thoroughly lost to sight as if he had been killed in his first battle The boys all concluded that he had been, and so, though they would stop and listen patiently to her story, they never held out any hope of a success full termination of the hunt.
 "So all through the war she moved about from camp to camp, and when it was all over and the boys in blue were tra1nping back to their homes, she, too, turned her face homeward towards the home she had not wis., ited for four years, towards the pa- rents and friends she had not heard from for an almost equal length of time.
 "It was all changed. Mother and father had died and were resting side by side in the little churchyard on the wooded hill south of the village. Time had changed all she had known, and with breaking heart she set out again on her lonely way towards the West.
 "Three years passed and found her a stranger, just arrived in Omaha, in 1867, rough frontier trading town. She was bent and gray before her time, and as she went about the city peddling apples from basket on her arm, she appeared fully fifty years of age, and Iguess everyone thought she was."
 "Well, was her husband ever heard fromY' ... "Yes, yes. Pm coming to that now. He, like the harum-scarum devil he was, took mighty little pains to hear from hls wife after he left her. As he went through battle after battle and campaign after campaign, he hardly seemed to give thought to anything but his carousals with his comrades.
 s'This war ended and he went to Dubuque, Ia., worked there a little while and married another woman. "Somehow or other the boys who left wives behind them were often very lax ill their efforts to locate them again, ]" and the examiner lapsed into thought full silence.
 "Well, what became of him, any l way?"
 ssI think he came to Omaha in 1886 with wife No. and lived only year.
 "Both women stayed along there, and naturally enough never met. Wife No. was thrifty sort of person all the way through, and she continued to go the rounds with her apple basket. When she died little over year and half ago, she was found to have ac- cumulated several thousand dollars.
 "Wife No. 9 made application for a pension several years ago, and for a time it was thought there would be no difficulty in securing it for her; but in the light of the facts, which l un- earthed after the case was referred to me, don't think she will stand much | show"
 A Popular Commodore.