The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-12-22
SILENT SEVENTEEN YEARS.
Man and Wife, Living in the Same
House, Never spoke TO Each other.

House, Never spoke TO Each other.
From the New York World.
New Haven, Dec. 12.-In the village of
Branford there is a two-story frame
house. old and battered by the weather,
and long implanted. 1t stands apart, and
for years none but the occupants have
gone into it. In that house Edward
Burke and Ellen, his wife, have lived for
twenty-three years. They were married
in 1872, and took this cottage and settled
down to a comfortable drowsy existence
after the fashion OF the respectable New
England village family.
AT the end of six years the neighbors,
who had been watching them carefully,
noticed that something was wrong. The
wife could be seen eating her meals at a
table ON the ground floor of the cottage,
while the husband was to be seen eating
at table in one of the upstairs rooms.
There were no mems articles in the
washing Ellen Burke hung out on the
line in the back yard, and once a week
Edward carried bundle to washing
woman in the Villages The ne1ghbOrs
decided that one of those fierce, bitter,
silent quarrels, not uncommon in New
England villages was on between them.
Burke and his wife were never seen
together, and, when the neighbors, bent
upon getting at the truth, questioned each
separately, they got no satisfaction.
Neither could speak the others name.
tense that to prevent some of the feebler
old people from dying of unsatisfied Gu
riosity a counsel was held and an ingen-
ious line of action was resolved upon.
They decided that it must be the man
who was at fault, and that he must be
crazy. So he was hauled up, and al the
village turned out to hear his eXplana-
ton. He simply said that he and his wife
had quarrelled, and had not been speak
ing, and, so far as he could manage ii,
would never speak to each other again.
Ia said that she lived the ground floor
and he on the second floor, and that each
establishment was complete in itself.
This was not lunacy, and so Edward
Burke was released and allowed to go
back to his queer home. But village GU
riosity was still a hunger and a thirst.
So Ellen Burke was hauled up, charged
she was perfectly sane, and did it without
letting out any more of the cause and
progress of the quarrel than had her nus
band.
After these lunacy proceedings, the
good people let them alone for a year
or two. Then they bethought them that
in a decent, godly place like Branford
such bitterness between husband and
wife was unseemly, revolutionary and
scandalous. So they went to the Burkes
and prayed with them and exhorted them
and threatened them. But the Burkes
acted as before and spoke not although
they passed each other many times every
They gradually dropped all their ac-
duaintances and spent all their time not
employed in making their separate and in
dependent liVings in the house, she brood
ing downstairs, he brooding in his sitting
room over her head. No doubt each sent
many a longing thought out towards the
other or backwards towards the days
when they had wandered the village lanes,
each with an arm around the other. But
that stubborn, relentless pride, that fear
of being thought weak and yielding, held
them apart And so the years passed
down to Nov last, almost the seven
teenth anniversary OF their quarrel.
on that day something happened no
one knows what, that angered Burke into
breaking the silence. Down the stairs he
came and, for the first time IN seventeen
years, walked In upon his wife and began
TO shout at her. She answered him IN