The circumstances attending his taking off were most mournful. He had
been for some time very much depressed in spirits of one kind and
another, and on last Wednesday morning was observed to be foaming at
the mouth. No attention was paid to this; his family believing it to be
a symptom of hydrophobia, with which he had been afflicted from the
cradle. Suddenly a dark-eyed stranger entered the house, took the
patient’s neck between his thumb and forefinger, threw the body across
his shoulder, winked respectfully to the bereaved widow, and withdrew
by way of the kitchen cellar. Farewell, pure soul! we shall meet again.
.... We are reluctantly compelled to relate the untimely death of Mrs.
Margaret Ann Picklefinch, which occurred about one o’clock yesterday
morning. The circumstances attending the melancholy event were these:—
Just before the hour named, her husband, the well-known temperance
lecturer, and less generally known temperance lecturee, came home from
an adjourned meeting of the Cold-Water Legion, and retired very drunk.
His estimable lady got up and pulled off his boots, as usual. He got
into bed and she lay down beside him. She uttered a mild preliminary
oath of endearment and suddenly ceased speaking. It must have been
about this time she died. About daylight he invited her to get up and
make a fire. Detecting no movement in her body he enforced family
discipline. The peculiar hard sound of his wife striking the floor
first aroused his suspicions of the bereavement he had sustained, and
upon rising later in the day he found his first fears realized; the
lady had waived her claim to his further protection.
We extend to Mr. P. our sincere sympathy in the greatest calamity that
can befall an unmarriageable man. The inconsolable survivor called at
our office last evening, conversed feelingly some moments about the
virtues of the dear departed, and left with the air of a dog that has
had his tail abbreviated and is forced to begin life anew. Truly the
decrees of Providence appear sometimes absurd.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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