neighborhood a little, and the Coroner tried to get something out
concerning the man’s history; but it all went to the wind, for the
people were all so ignorant. They all knew everything about him, which
turned out to be just nothing, which they were ready to swear to. One
believed Father Flaherty made the Bible, another believed the Devil
still chained in Columbia College-a third believed the stars were
lanterns to guide priests-the only angels they know-on their way to
heaven.”
“Truly!” exclaims the man of the spectacles, in a moment of
abstraction.
Brother Spyke says: “the Lord be merciful.”
“On the body of the poor man we found this document. It was rolled
carefully up in a rag, and is supposed to throw some light on his
history.” Mr. Fitzgerald draws leisurely from his pocket a distained
and much-crumpled paper, written over in a bold, business-like hand,
and passes it to the man in the spectacles, as a dozen or more anxious
faces gather round, eager to explore the contents.
“He went out of the Points as mysteriously as he came in. We buried him
a bit ago, and have got Downey in the Tombs: he’ll be hanged, no
doubt,” concludes the detective, laying aside his cap, and setting
himself, uninvited, into a chair. The man in the spectacles commences
reading the paper, which runs as follows:
“I have been to you an unknown, and had died such an unknown, but that
my conscience tells me I have a duty to perform. I have wronged no one,
owe no one a penny, harbor no malice against any one; I am a victim of
a broken heart, and my own melancholy. Many years ago I pursued an
honorable business in this city, and was respected and esteemed. Many
knew me, and fortune seemed to shed upon me her smiles. I married a
lady of wealth and affluence, one I loved and doted on. Our affections
seemed formed for our bond; we lived for one another; our happiness
seemed complete. But alas! an evil hour came. Ambitious of admiration,
she gradually became a slave to fashionable society, and then gave
herself up to those flatterers who hang about it, and whose chief
occupation it is to make weak-minded women vain of their own charms.
Coldness, and indifference to home, soon followed. My house was
invaded, my home-that home I regarded so sacredly-became the resort of
men in whose society I found no pleasure, with whom I had no feeling in
common. I could not remonstrate, for that would have betrayed in me a
want of confidence in the fidelity of one I loved too blindly. I was
not one of those who make life miserable in seeing a little and
suspecting much. No! I forgave many things that wounded my feelings;
and my love for her would not permit a thought to invade the sanctity
of her fidelity. Business called me into a foreign country, where I
remained several months, then returned-not, alas! to a home made happy
by the purity of one I esteemed an angel;—not to the arms of a pure,
fond wife, but to find my confidence betrayed, my home invaded-she, in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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