A TERRIBLE STORY.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 3, Issue 141, 19 June 1880, Page 3

A TERRIBLE STORY.

A terrible story leaches the Petersburg Herald from Samara. Some few days ago the wife of a skilled artisan, named Schinid, of that town, was brought to bed of a child while her husband, who bad become a confirmed sot, and spent nil his wages for many previous weeks in liquor, was away from home upon a drunken frolic. Two days after her confinement, Sohmid staggered in about noon, and began to shout, with horrible threats and curses, for his dinner. There having been neither food nor money in the house since he had last left it, the unfortunate woman had had no. nourishment for herself or her babe since its birth, and the latter had died of exhaustion buii a few minutes before its heiviless father made his appearance, intoxicated and blaspheming, in the room where a son had buen born to him whilst he was squandering iiis wages in drink. To Soliniid's brutal menaces his miserable wife made no answer. Silently she rose from her sordid pallet, wan, emaciated, a mere spectre of a woman, crept across lo the dresser, took thence a largo dish, which she carried back to the bed, and, placing her baby's corpse upon the dish, set it down on the table before her husband, with the simple but awful words, " There is nothing else to eat in the house! 1 ' Schmid sat, gazing with a glassy stare at his .lead child for some time. Presently a neighbour came in and spoke to him. bat lie uttered-no word ami made 1,0 sign. Upon closer examination he was found to have entirely lost his reason ; and he was conveyed to the Samara madhouse, where he still remains, a hopeless lunatic.