Year: 1868




While Sleeping Is Robbed of Her


Hair.


From the Memphis Ledger. July l.


II, indeed, any additional evidence were
required to establish the pretensions OF
Memphis to metropolitan airs, what we are
about to narrate must supply the de-
fciency, and once for all convince the in
credulous, if thereare any such. But before
proceeding further, let us, by way of pre-
face, lest We are so unfortunate as to be
discrediled, assure the reader for the truth
of what follows we have the assurance of
one whose reliability and veraeity cannot
be called in question. This remark, at
the outset, will seem the more necessary
to those disposed to be skeptieal, in view
OF the fact that we are compelled from
sense of respect for the feelings of those
OF whom we are about TO speak, to with
hold, at least for the present, all names
and Localities. Suffice it to say, that In the
eastern portion of the city there resides a
young lady of respectability and rare per-
Fonal beauty, who, on the evening of Thurs
day lat, was despoiled Of the most dearly
priced of the many charms nature had
lavished upon her. She was doomed, in.
deed, to suffer no less loss than that of her
hair, and here, again, that we may be un-
derstood as speaking in no vague and in.
defnate terms, let us add, her real and
bona fde hair, natural outgrowth which
fell, but alas, no longer falls, in raven ring
lets over brow and bust of rarest mould,
through which the breeze, with dainty
fingers was wOntto play, and now must sigh
that it never may 80 daily with it again.
Not by the slow theft of disease or
the yet slower ravages of time was
the loss sustained. Oh, mol a misfor-
tune SO common and inimitable would not
be worth the mention. a theft indeed il
was, but one more bruel than either time
or disease, which prey upon every charm
at once, would have wrought. 1t was thus
On the evening in question, the lady, rln-
locking the luxuriance OF her tresses, and
allowing them to fall loosely over her
shoulders, threw herself upon lounge in
the parlOr of her home, near by an opan
wiAdow, through which an evening zephyr
famed her with its airy wings Thus at
ease, reclining and overcome by the dro,F-
siness Of summers afternoon, she soon
was fast asleep. Fast asleep we may be as
sured; for an hour, or perhaps more,
having elapsed, she awoke to the painful
discovery that during her unconscious
slumberlng some unknown person had
desecrated the privacy of the apartment,
hlched from her head its wealth of hair,
and made off with the same unknown
TO her Only the stray locks upon
which her head had fallen had escaped the
sacrilegious shears. Only the mere stumps
and stubs, which, however much they
might have. become a member of the prize
ring, upon the head of belle were come
thing shocking to Contemplate--only these
were left of the luxuriant lengths that had
been. Bewildered, shocked, and half doubt
ing her own senses, she rose from the lounge.
Was she really awake, or was it not dream,
from which she bad not awakened ?
Springing to a mirror her eyes only too
cruelty confirmed the dreadful appreheu-
sion that had flashed across her mind
when first on awakening, she reached TO
gather up her scattered tresses and found
them not We can imagine her contem
plating in the glass the reflection of her
altered SELF Samson, shorne of his his
locks while sleeping, could not have real
lied more fully the loss of his strength than
must she have done the loss Of her beauty.
But the thief and the motiye2 Who had
been the Delilah, and what could have ac-
tuated SO base deed. Alas "the fatal
gift of beauty" True, her own experience
had probably taught her that there was a
value attached to her missing tresses, be
they upon her own or the head of another.
Could they have been stolen then for sale,
as necklace or a mantle would have
been ? Had she been actually sheared as
the vulgar sheep for what her hair would
bring A stolen lock in the locket of an
admirer would be bearable, but the sight
of her whole suit in the wigmaker's window
would not for a moment do to contemplate.