Year: 1868

The following incident Of t-.iVel is
narrated by a correspondent of the
Daily SaratogiaR. 1t took place on the
Rensselaer, d Saratoga Railroad, on one
of the Northern trains, between Sara
tOga and whitehall: u adf
! When the train halted at Saratoga,
among the passengers from the. West
came a man of about thirty years of
age, elbowing bis way through the
crowd, and bearing in bis arms a child.
He was a poor man; his clothes were
poor; be looked poor Around his hat
was tied a piece of soiled, worn Grape.
1t was evidently all the mourning his
scanty means would permit, for the
mother Of the child was dead.


This man was rough in exterior, yet
bis face was an honest one. He handled
the baby swkwardly, yet there was a
tenderness in his sad look that showed
the purity Of fathers love. The lit
tie fellow lay asleep on his coarsely clad
knee; stray sunbeam glanced across
its tired face. They were both tired,
the father and child, for they had come
from the far West; and as he placed
his hard, toil=Rorn hands to shield IL
from the goldenrays, there was in his.
look mixture of sadness and care, as
if his pent-up feelings had been so
crowded back into the inner cells of bis
heart that even tears could have been
no relief to the hidden anguish that
was making his life a misery,


The poor child cried it might be the.
little thing was tired, it might be It
missed its mother; perhaps it was hun
CRY; perhaps it was sick, and so it
cried. TIE tears rolled down It's baby
cheeks; the father wiped away the
dew-drops as they fell, and then tried
to feed it. He was SO awkward with
the bottle--bis had been a life of toll
and hardship and he knew not how
to give his darling its nourishment.
As he made effort after effort TO stife
the cries and check the tears of his
motberless babe, how he must have
missed her who in his life of labor and
privation had been his sOlace and com
fort! An unbidden tear started to his
eye, but he brushed it quickly away.
All who saw him pitied him. At
length woman richly apPareled, with
an infant resting on the lap of her nurse
beside her-she had been watching the
man-said in a gentle tone, ''Give me
the child" The poor fellow looked at
her with look of gratitude, for there
was a mothers tenderness in her voice.
With humble resignation, as though it
were pain to part with him, even for q
moment he gave her his boy. The
woman took it; its soiled clothes rested
on her costly silk; its tiny head was
soon beneath her shawl, and in q
moment all was still. Like the Grecian
daughter, who through the iron bars
fed her starving father so did this
high-born lady from her breast feed the
hungry child, and when, on her gentle
bosom the little one lay realm and
unvexed sleep, she put aside the shawl,


The fathers heart swelled with graft
tude. He said, as tear weIled in his
eye, and his voice was thick with emo
ton. "Thank you, I'll take him now."
Then the woman's nature spoke forth,
as she gently answered, "Not yet; you
will wake him." and for mile after mile
that noble-hearted woman held that
poor mans child, and it was not until
her own babe required such nourish-
ment as only a mother can give, shs
gently rose and placed the stranger boy
with its father.