THE MAN WHO NEVER SMILES.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Issue 42, 20 July 1878, Page 3

THE MAN WHO NEVER SMILES.

(Springfield, Mass., Republican.)

Governor Rice is asked to pardon one O'Donncll, of Millbury, from Charlestown, and a gentleman who recently visited the State Prison thus tells his story : " Gentlemen," said the Warden, " I want to bring before you one of the most remarkable cases in the prison. We call him ' the man who never smiles,' and I wish before he comes in to tell you his story. He seems to be a man of more than ordinary ability, one of the better class uf substantial, frugal Irish citizens, who owned a small place in one of our manufacturing villages, where lie resided with his family of grown-up sons and daughters, all permanently employed and in comfortable circumstances. The old man had a fine garden on which he bestowed bis leisure hours, in a part of which was a tine lot of cabbages. It seems that the boys in the neighbourhood had a habit of trespassing on the old man's garden, until he had determined on getting rid of them by firing his gun to frighten them away. One night, hearing someone in his garden, he took down his gun, and getting behind the hedge, fired into the garden, as he claims, without aim or seeing anyone to aim at. But the report of the gun alarmed the neighbours, who, on rushing into the garden found the lifeless body of a young girl shot through the heart. The old man, when told what lie had done, was struck dumb. He was arrested and sentenced to imprisonment for life. lie has now been here for ten years, and his face has become as marble ; there is no hope ; nothing hut the sad remembrance of that dreadful night. In Ireland they have a superstition among the young girls that whoever on Halloween shall place a cabbage over the door will marry the first young man that enters the door afterwards. And this, it was proved, was the errand of the young girl in the old man's garden. But instead of a wedding she found a grave.