SOCIAL LIFE IN AMERICA.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2124, 13 January 1880, Page 2

SOCIAL LIFE IN AMERICA.

A graphic picture o£ the manner in which morals are fashioned in portions of the United States is supplied by the San Francisco correspondent of the Otago “ Daily Times,” from which we take the following extractln Cincinnatti a young woman, who loved not wisely but too well, went to her deceiver in his hotel, and sent for him to the public room. He was the agent of Miss Anderson, the actress, and she was jealous of the fair artiste. He refused to marry her, and she shot him down, and then shot herself dead, through the heart. Her coffin was buried two feet deep in flowers, contributed by the fallen women of the city ; and public sentiment, among all classes, went along with her to the tomb. This is how private morals are fashioned. Take another case nearer home. Across the Bay of San Francisco, at Oakland a much more melancholy tragedy was enacted a few weeks ago. There, a young man of promise, a member of a Church, betrothed to an amiable young lady, fell away under the allurements of a young girl, a child almost in years and a novice almost in vice. He abandoned home and hope for her, and this is how it all ended within a mouth’s acquaintance: Bemorse took possession of him. His conscience drove him mad, and he swallowed strychnine in a room at the hotel where they lived. The dose was too large to kill, and his frightened companion Went out for help. Then came a pistol-shot, and ho fell back dead—the blood oozing from his mouth—a bullet through his heart. Quick as thought she closed and fastened the door stretched him on the bed, took her place by his side; then another pistol-shot, and without a quiver with dress and limbs decently composed, she lay a corpse beside the man she loved, and who erred and died through love of her. The shock upon the community was great. His aged parents had his corpse removed to their home, where friends trooped in to solace their grief. Her corpse was removed to the morgue ; but Oh it was pitiful! In a whole city full Friend she had none. The young man was buried with religious services, his old pastor officiating, and his grave and bier were strewed with flowers. She lay unclaimed in the morgue, in a common shell packed in ice, till her mother, the wife of three husbands, by virtue of the Divorce Court, who had abandoned her , and her younger sister,at a tender age, could be communicated with in a distant part of the State. Her sister, however, came forward and bore .the charge of her burial, Public sentiment meanwhile had changed, and tKe rich and prudent, ; matron, maid, and wife, trooped into the morgue by hundreds to gaze upon the pale, placid face, shed tears of sympathy and deposit floral wreaths upon her bier. She too, was buried with religious services, the same preacher, Dr Guard, officiating, and there was not a dry eye at the tomb of the self immolated Magdalene, a daughter of California, once so full of hope and promise. Thus again, public sentiment is formed, private morals shaped, and the worthlessness of human life illustrated,”