The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-04-25
A HAPPY ROMANCE
A Husband and Wife Meet After
Seventeen Years.
Son, Who Had Never Seen His Father, Tells
the Srory-A Newspaper Account of the
Husbands Death Explains it.
Especial to THE HERA1D-Examiner Dispatch

Especial to THE Observation-Disclosures Dispatch.
CHICAGO, April PA charming little ro-
nance developed in the waiting room of
Union depot to day, involving the first meet
ing in seventeen years of husband and
wife and the first sight bright youth ever
had of his father. At an early hour hand
some, well dressed lady arrived at the
depot with bright looking youth of some
seventeen years. They were nervous and
impatient, but not from fear, as could be
surmised from the happy expression upon
their faces. The young man told the story
to reporter, while the mother lent an in
terested ear and occasionally interrupted
with some slight correction:
"We are waiting the arrival of my
father" he began, ''whom have never
SEEN Eighteen years ago my mother was
married to gentleman from st. Louis, of
the name of N. T. Hankins, at the home of
her parents, IN Orange, N. ]. Father was
engaged IN mercantile life in St Louis and
was away from home great deal. Sew
eral months after his wedding he was sent
to san francisco and from there to New
South Wales, in Australia. He became SO
deeply infatuated with the country that he
determined to take up his abode there,
1t was arranged that he should go there
and prepare home for his wife. The let
tiers he sent home were filled with glowing
accounts of the country and mother pre-
pared to leave Orange and start for the
South Sea islands. Then suddenly she
read in the papers that n. T. Hawkins had
been drowned while crossing a river in
small boat. This shock was followed in
less than week by the death of her
father. l was then but a few months old
aud mothers health was much impaired
but she went to live with her brother in st.
Paul. The change did her no good and
she started to travel in search of health
1t never came and for five years she went
from place to place without any beneficial
results. Then she returned to ST. Paul
and lived an invalid life for seuen wears
One day letter, with the address nearly
effaced, with postoffice marks and various
brands, reached her. She opened it with
much curiosity and learned that 1t was
from her husband, whom she had long sup
posed to be dead. 1t had been written
many years before but through some ones
error IL had been missent and miscarried
The letter conveyed the information that
my father was alive and well. 1t was an
other Hawkins who was drowned The
news almost made my mother well
and she at once instituted search,
UuU ~ Nd HOI Hull SlA nOnGQS
ago that she found my father and
then it was by the merest chance. He had
moved from time to time to various parts
of the country and was then engaged in
sheep-raising few miles from Melbourne.
And now mother and have come from St.
Pau to meet him.
The Alton train pulled in short time
afterWard, and from it there stepped re-
markably well-preserved man of some
forty years. 1t is hardly necessary to de-
scribe the reunion that followed. The
happy trio left this evening for st. Paul.
Mr.. Hankins has amassed fortune in the
sheep raising business.