AFFECTING EVIDENCE OF THE GERMAN LOSSES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 55, 10 February 1872, Page 9

AFFECTING EVIDENCE OF THE GERMAN LOSSES.

We take the following from an English paper:— A few days ago I had occasion to call upon a gentleman residing in the immediate vicinity of Barmen. He was temporarily absent when I called, and I was received by a young lady in deep mourning, whose thin half-trans-parent face bore the unmistakeable mark of a threatening early death. I had called for some special information on the subject of the relief of the poor in Elberfeld and Barmen. As'the young lady was unable to give me the papers referring to the matter, I was shown into a room, there to await the return of the master of the house. There my eyes fell on a large family Bible which lay on a side-table. I could not resist the temptation to read. I found that the gentleman whose arrival I was awaiting there had had a family of eight chil. dren, four sons and four daughters. His wife had died some twenty years ago, and all their daughters had died in their childhood. Of their sons, the eldest had fallen at Duppel, in the Danish war of ISG4. Following the entry of his death his father's hand had traced the words :—",Woe unto me ! The pride of my house is laid low, and the prop of my old age hath been taken away!" In 1860, two sons, the one an officer, the other a soldier in the Prussian army, had met their death for King and Fatherland, one at Gitshin, the other at Koniginhof. Here, again, the joint record of the father's bereavement was followed by a few words of intense grief, but also of pious resignation ! —" Lord thy hand is heavy upon me. My misery is more than I can bear; Yet thy will be done. Thou knowest best." Then came the entry of the marriage of the youngest and last surviving son on Sunday, 17th July, 1870, with the broken young rose whom I had seen—there could be no doubt about it, as she told me her father would soon be back ; and then came the final entry :—" My Oscar—the youngest, the last, the best loved, of my sons —died on the 21st of August of wounds, received in the accursed battle of Mars-la-Tour. The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away. Praised be the name of the Lord." But the entry was blurred and scarcely legible, bearing witness that, however willing and stout the spirit had been to bear, the flesh had given way. I closed the book with a feeling of deep sadness, and rapidly regained my chair, trembling less the bereaved old man should suddenly come in, and read in my troubled face some telling indication of the indiscretion which I had committed in reading his family records. I had,however, fortunately ample timeto recover my composure before the gentleman made his appearance at last. He was a tall man, but woefully bowed down, clearly less with age than by sorrow r and suffering. He received me with great urbanity, and kindly placed at my disposal all the information it was in his power to give on the subject of m}' visit to him. When I left him I pondered deeply on the melancholy results of the mad ambition of princes, and the wretched love of glory of nations. Hero was a whole once happy family laid low in the brief space of a few years.