PARENTAGE.--FATHER'S MARRIAGE.
I was born at St. John's, New Brunswick, in the year 1835. My father was
from the city of Dublin, Ireland, where he spent his youth, and received
an education in accordance with the strictest rules of Roman Catholic
faith and practice. Early manhood, however, found him dissatisfied with
his native country, longing for other scenes and distant climes. He
therefore left Ireland, and came to Quebec.
Here he soon became acquainted with Capt. Willard, a wealthy English
gentleman, who, finding him a stranger in a strange land, kindly opened
his door, and gave him employment and a home. Little did he think that
in so doing he was warming in his bosom a viper whose poisonous fangs
would, ere long, fasten on his very heart-strings, and bring down
his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. His only child was a lovely
daughter of fourteen. From what I have heard of her, I think she must
have been very beautiful in person, quiet, gentle and unassuming in
her deportment, and her disposition amiable and affectionate. She was
exceedingly romantic, and her mental powers were almost, if not entirely
uncultivated; still, she possessed sufficient strength of character to
enable her to form a deep, ardent, and permanent attachment.
The young stranger gazed upon her with admiring eyes, and soon began
to whisper in her ear the flattering tale of love. This, of course,
her parents could not approve. What! give their darling to a stranger?
Never, no, never. What could they do without her? Grieved that their
kindness should have been thus returned, they bade him go his way, and
leave their child in peace. He did go, but like a thief he returned. In
the darkness of midnight he stole to her chamber, and bore away from the
home of her childhood, "a father's joy, a mother's pride."
Who can tell the anguish of their souls when they entered that deserted
chamber? How desolate their lonely hearthstone! How dark the home where
her presence had scattered rainbow hues! A terrible blow it was to
Capt. Willard; a very bitter thing thus to have his cherished plans
frustrated, his brightest hopes destroyed; to see the very sun of his
existence go down at midday in clouds and darkness. Yes, to the
stern father this sad event brought bitter, bitter grief. But to the
mother--that tender, affectionate mother, it was death. Yea, more
than death, for reason, at the first shock, reeled and tottered on its
throne; then, as days and weeks passed by, and still the loved one did
not return, when every effort to find her had been made in vain, then,
the dread certainty settled down upon her soul that her child was lost
to her forever. Hope, gave place to despair, and she became, from that
time, a raving maniac. At length death came to her relief, and her
husband was left alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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