Year: 1878

On cold, clear night of the winter
of 1860, a rich German brewer of St.
Louis was OH the way from the brewery
to his handsome home in Market Street,
pondering very gravely upon some sub
ject of great apparent anxiety as he
hastened along. After marriage of
many years he was about becoming, for
the first time, father. The occasion
was not favorable one for wayside
aims, and hence when he was accosted
for help by poor Irishman whom he
had often employed in trihing jobs, and
who lived in one of row of forlorn
houses a short distance southward from
his own mansion, his response was not
gracious. But the man followed him
along and persisted in his entreaties,
upon the final plea that "A newborn
baby, scarcely an hour old, was wailing
for covering and warmth in his wretch
ed den of tenement. This pitiable
information touched the worthy Ger
mans heart at that moment with ire
sistible effect, and he handed the petit
TONERS generous gift, with the promise
to see what better could be done for him
on the morrow. Toward the dawn of
that morrow the good Samaritan's wife
became the mother of son, which
lived not an hour. AT the time Of the
child's death the sick lady was uncon-
scious and in very critical condition,
and husband, nurse and physician
trembled at the thought of what might
be the fatal effect of the news when
first the poor mother should demand to
be shown her babe. Nearly frenzied
for some means of averting what all
dreaded, the brewer suddenly bethought
him of the destitute and desparing fa-
ther who had addressed him in the
street, Why might not that mans
child be substituted for his own dead
son in the recognition of the sick
mother until that mother should have
regained her physical strength sutfi-
GENTLY to endure a knowledge of the
truth? The idea was communicated to
the physician and nurse, who approved
it as an only, if desperate, resource, and
in short time thereafter, the nurse and
father repaired to the tenement house
for its attempted execution. Upon
hearing their oft-time benefactor's
strange proposition, the impoverished
parents of the living baby could not but
consent. They were near starvation,
and the unwilling little one, now
shivering with cold, could experience
no harm. In short, the brewer and his
attendant carried back the wailing mite
with them, and the dead child was for
the nonce conveyed to the tenement
house. When the sick mother, in the
course of few hours, resumed con-
sciousness, she at once made the antici-
pated request, and upon seeing the bor-
rowed babe, gathered it fervently to her
arms and fell asleep with its head upon
her breast. Deception, even for the
most generous purposes, is always dam
gerous, and now that it has been so
practiced upon his wife, the brewer
dared not undo it. Finally, forming a
daring resolve, he sought again the
squalid father and mother, and offered
them sum ofmoney sufficient to keep
them in comfort for life if they would
suffer the dead infant to be buried as
their own and allow their boy to be left
with him in perpetual parental adop-
ton. According to the local paper
which completed the strange story, this
proposition was, after some hesitation,
agreed to. Before the wife of the
brewer had become convalescent, the
parents Of him who she yet believed to
be her own son, had removed to another
city, richer than ever before in their
lives by many thousand dollars; nor is
it known that the secret was revealed
to her for several years from the date of
its inception. Two or three years ago
the brewer died; and, although his will
related enough of the story to make
valid its bequest Of a fortune to the fos-
ter son at his majority, that now well
educated and well-grown youth knew
not his whole story until it was confided
to him lately by his own true sire, call
ing him to his dying bedside in the
workhouse. Losing his wife soon after
their removal from St. Louis, the man
had turned his curiously acquired for
tune to bad account, squandered it all,
and thus came to pauperism. Thus
ends strange tale.