MAJOR THROCKMORTON’S SHADOW.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 992, 29 October 1881, Page 4

MAJOR THROCKMORTON’S SHADOW.

A WOMAN SILENTLY FOLLOWS FOB TWENTY-THREE YEABS THE MAN WHO HAD WBONGED HEB. Louisville, July 7.—To-day came news of the death, in Mississippi, of Major John R. Throckmorton, of Louisville, a man of leisure and of style, a bachelor of 65, a famous beau of a quarter of a century ago, and the lover of the beautiful Sallie Watt, at the time when the bewitching Southern girl captured the son of the Puritan Gov. Lawrence of Massachusetts. When the young bride went to her New England home, Throckmorton, followed. It is asserted that jealousy of Throckmorton, which Mrs. Lawrence was too proud to resent by explanation, was in reality the cause which led to the separation of Lawrence and his wife. Sallie Ward came back to her father’s house, and a divorce was granted Lawrence on the ground of desertion. The lady gave no explanation. Throckmorton still hovered around devotedly, but was not rewarded by the lady’s hand. She married Doctor Hunt, and after 'his death became the wife of a wealthy pork man named Armstrong. When this gentleman died, it was rumoured that at last Major Throckmorton was to be blessed for his lifetime devotion, but the handsome widow drives about in the finest private turnout the city affords, and has paid no more attention to the addresses of the Major than in the days of her girlhood. The , beauty of the Kentucky belle, Sallie Ward, made her fame world wide, and the persistency with which the Major followed her gave him a certain interest in the eyes of the multitude, but it was another woman that held him up to the gaze of mankind, a woman who shadowed him more constantly than he haunted the path of the famous belle.

Throckmorton was a pleasing and frivolous man of the world when he first met the school girl, Ellen Godwin He was about 30 years of age ; she

was 15. Her family was at least the equal of his, and to an older sister he had been paying attention. The girl was impulsive, interesting, and innocent. He deliberately set to work to feign love and to gain her heart. Having gained it, he threw it aside without concern and went his way. Soon after a veiled figure appeared on the streets of Louisville —a girlish form that moved silently after the man wherever he went. She never spoke to him, neither upbraided nor reviled. When he entered the hotel she stood at the door ; when he emerged from his club house she was at his side phantom-like. He jocularly spoke of her to his friends as his “ Hell’s Delight.” Ten years passed. Her old friends decided her crazy for keeping the thing up. Fifteen years rolled around, the police knew her, they watched her faithfully, as some harmless demented thing, and passed her from beat to beat, as she ploughed her way homeward in the wee sma' hours of the stormy night. No human ever offered her harm or insult, although she often stood all night before the places where her guilty lover was hidden. Twenty years were gone ; old friends had died —father, mother, schoolmates Her hair had thinned and whitened ; her form stooped ; a cough sounded hollowly on the air ; her step was more feeble ; yet none the less it tracked a portly, gray haired, fashionably attired man from mansion to mansion on New Year’s Day, from theatre and club-room, night after night. Twenty-three years passed. Even the little children grew to know the plain, shabby, black-robed woman, and tiny fingers pointed at Throckmorton's ghost. Young girls looked wonderingly after her as she passed them silently. Wives sighed or smiled pityingly—they were so secured and sheltered—when her garments brushed their own. Mothers grasped their girls more closely — suppose this woman’s wrong should be the fate of their sweet daughters in the days to come. So, for twenty-three years, the phantom, silent, certain, dogged the betrayer’s steps. At last friends of his had her arrested as a lunatic, and, through their misguided precaution, the man and woman were brought face to face in the court-room at Louisville. Then it was that all the city woke up to the knowledge that this woman was neither crazy nor a fool. Her language was eloquent, her manner refined’, her face firm. The whole sad story of her life was told—her vow to follow him until the hour if retribution, her persistent watching, her silence and revenge. Before the woman he had wronged Throckmorton quailed, and his bravado was not equal to the crossquestioning to which he was exposed. At last, one evening as I was walking along Jefferson-street, near the Court House, a great shout ascended ; cheer after cheer went up. The old Court House rang with applause. Men threw up their hats. Ellen Godwin was acquitted, and Throckmorton's ghost was laid, for the woman, having brought him to the bar and having told the story of his perfidy, said that her work was done, and that she would haunt him no more.

Throckmorton, conscious of his guilt, had refrained from arresting her, greatly as she annoyed him, during all the twenty-three years, and the story would have been untold, and she would have lived and died, regarded by the present generation as a monomaniac, had not the gallant Major’s friends interposed their well-meaning blunder. There never was a trial in the city that equalled this in interest. At its close the entire room was filled with shouts, which those outside took up, until the whole city rang with the news of the vindication. The jurors crowded around and shook hands with the accused, and persons who for years had passed her without recognition asked pardon of their old friend.

After the trial, my friends tell me that Ellen Goodwin never in any way noticed or spoke of Major Throckmorton. A time spent in retirement, and then the desire seemed to awaken in this blighted heart to know and feel some of the happy things of life, from which she had debarred herself. Her shabby black was laid aside; plain clothing, but the richest, took its place; study, books, and music filled the days. One day the guests at lhe Galt House saw an elegantly dressed lady enter the dining room with Mrs. Gen. Preston. This beautiful lady paid her friend every attention, and poor Ellen Godwin awakened wonder afresh, by her ease in the new position. She boarded some time at the Galt House, and then travelled for awhile. But the purpose that had kept her up so long was now lacking, and she sank gradually from earth until, a few years after her arraignment, she quietly passed away. It has been a mystery how she kept track of Throckmorton on his frequent tours. Some persons say she possessed clairvoyant power, or could read the mind of her lover; others supposed that the Major’s body servant, who always accompanied him, gave the information. lam told that in her last days she regretted having neglected the beauty of the body for so long. It was her desire that at death she should be handsomely robed. The directions for her funeral were left with her lawyers, and she went to her last sleep dressed like a queen, in a black velvet burial robe, with rich laces, silken hose, and dainty slippers. —Oinwnnatti Commercial.