A HERO OF HUMBLE LIFE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1546, 30 April 1887, Page 3

A HERO OF HUMBLE LIFE

A touching atory comes from Essex. A poor girl who died m the Brompton Hospital of Consumption, expressed a with to be buried at Little Horkesley, Borne fifty mileß from London. H-r mother »nd stepfather were poor and oould Dot afford to omy oat her wish m the ordinary way. So the man. the subject cf this notice, though he happened to be 111 and weak at the time, firßt made the coffin, and then wheeled the body do mi to its destination on a hand-cart. It took him three days to reach the Essex village. On the fourth day be saw the gfrl buried, and her new-made grave decked with "flowerß from the kitchen garden and meadow," and then his cask wan done. The local paper got wind of it, and bo the tale of quiet heroism came out. Then of course, Joseph Ball had to be interviewed, and to help to make aomethir-g for the papers cut of a deed wdich, t-> yond. doubt, la the doing of it, he thought the meet simple and natural thing m ihe world. He took hla little boy of t-.n with him, to give a lift at the hills. (n j (he level road, the boy had his lift iv the hand cart, with the corpse. &.t o c of the places where they stopped, some village bumble bee wanted to interfere, on the plea that he was a detective. The passage m which this incident is rel-tttd would not have been unworthy of Bunyan. «• We had a bother, aod he would have forced open the coffin, but my Master is always stronger than the devil, and he gave me strength to struggle with the man, and put him out of the Louse." The inspector of police, who afterwatds appeared on the scene, showed more common sense, and after taking the amateur undertakers name and address, let him go on his way. The story is a perfect bit of quiet beauty as it stands, and we dread to mar it with a superfluous word. If a great genius took it m hnnd he might make it imperishable. 'Ihe poor have a way of doing these fine things for one another without knowing that anything has been done The last thiug the poor cabinetmaker thought of, we may be sure, was that his walking funeral of fifty miles would get into print.