The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1902-08-24
Special to the Globe

Special to the Globe. ~-----A-'
NEW YORK, Aug. 23.-Nowhere in
the world are fortunes so rapidly made
and lost as in the United States, no.
where are the mutations Of the social
tide more radical and irregular than
mere. When once the flush of wealth
mas passed away everyone finds their
level. Nowhere else is this felt with
such a particular keenness.
A city like New York, or for the
| matter of that, almost anyone of our
large cities, is replete with hundreds of
instances Of persons facing the hard
est kind of poverty, who were raised in
aff1uence.
A strlkingly pathetic case of this kind
was revealed here recently by the COM
m1tment to the WorkhouSe on Black
wells Island at her own request Of Miss
Mary Odell, former belle of New
York and a member. of one of the best
and proudeSt families in the state. A
few days before Mary Odell made this
strange request her sister Cornelia,
another old time New York beauty
had been sent to the almshouse for six
months and it was for the purpose OF
being reunited to her that Mary re-
quested to be committed also.
Fifty years ago, when Misses Corne-
liza and Mary Odell were bellies the
family owned fine home in old Green
Wich village. John Odell, their father,
was a man Of wealth and influence.
He had large wholesale ice trade
end controlled a big meat business in
the Tompkins market. That was in the
days when there were few. buildings
north of Unions, Square, or at most
Twenty third street. Catherine street
was the great drygoods shopping thor
oughfare and the Bowery q country
| road. n 81
Family of Wealth.
II. Lafayette Place at this time was
the home of a family already patrician
according to the status accorded by the
early social arbiters of the city. In this
family were two sons conspicuous for
their style, distingue appearance and
all the social graeeS (which mark the
cultured man of the world. The two
brothers had been educated abroad
and had both devoted themselves to
law The rapid incr ease in the value %
the family farnass located as they were
in the very center. of New York city,
has precluded the necessity for the
young men applying themselves very
assiduously to the practice Of their
profession.
BY an accident, we may call it, for
social lines were sharply drawn in
those days as now, the Odell sisters
met these two brothers and there was
love affair, something which touched
four lives keenly and broke two hearts.
These. We're the hearts of the two wom-
en-. Oneaof the brothers died. The other
married--a later belle, a woman whose
name has helped to fill the society col,
umns. He too died about five years ago.
Since that early incident there has
been nothing to keep the two sisters
in touch with the men they loved.
Social economies have separated the
two couples. The fortunes of the Odell
family, as far as the two girls were
concerned, dwindled They were the
proudly poor-4they shad both expe-e
riereed their life fofnances and it was
asbarren harvest. They have lived like
two nuns together and for each other,
and when one aWoke the other morning
and found her sister absent she won
dered and fell into strange doubt.
Poorer Day BY Day.
For over forty years the sisters had
lived together as their fortunes
Went-and knowing nothing of their
wealthy relatives, but growing poorer
day by day, feeling the keen touch Of
poverty gnaWing at their vitals, but
still elevated and kept beyond, not only
the sordid sufferings of the world, but
alive by the divine inspiration of love
for one another.
AS soon as Cornelia could get her
her sister,.
Mary is not as strong as I am" she
said, land was fearful she had met
with some accident or that she would
be taken i'll on the street. She is all.
that I have to live for now, and have
not felt that she has been quite her.
self for three years past
IF can only find Mary"
The quest for Mary did not take Cor
nelfa far. Only to- that bourne of many
a shattered character and forlorn
hope, Jefferson Market police court.
There was nothing told Of past af-
1uence or hopes or hearts gone astray
in her simple statement to the justice
of the bench.
She said: 81 have found out that nv
sister Mary was sent to the workhouse.
| am sixty years old and she has never
been away from me before since she
was born. We cannot live apart We
will be happier together, even in q
prison."
Society items in the current news
have not covered this little human
tragedy. 1t is one of the many, but one
that breaches us the deep pathos of
life -and tells us that love can reach
even into the=workhouse
H. E. Clamp,