AN AMERICAN ENOCH ARDEN

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 160, 13 April 1872, Page 3

AN AMERICAN ENOCH ARDEN

a singular story. The general feeling of uneasiness excited by the number of Enoch Ardens who have recently turned up will not be lessened by an event which lias just happened in Missouri, arid is thus related by the Cincinnati Enquirer. A one-armed horseman lately travelling through Missouri, stopped at a blacksmith’s shop in Cedar City to have his horse shod. The smith noticed his empty sleeve, and asked him if he had lost his arm in the war. He replied with a sigh that he had, and added, with much emotion, that on going hack to his homo at the close of the war, he found that his wife, who thought he was dead, had moved away, ami be bad since been unable to find a trace of her. “ What is your name ?” asked the blacksmith. “J. M. Waldrup,” was the reply. The smith suddenly released the hoof of tbe Imrse over which be had been beiming, and without looking at the ex-soldier, cried “ Follow me into the house,” and hurriedly led the way. Waldrup mechanically obeyed the unexpected bidding, and was ushered into the presence of a comely mat.on, about whose sewing chair three happy children were playing. She was the blacKsmith’s wife, the mother of his little ones, and rose to greet the stranger on his appearance with her husband at me door. No sooner, however, did she catch sight of his face than she uttered a heartrending shriek and fainted. In Waldrup she recognised her husband. In the firm belief that lie had been killed in the war she had married the blacksmith of Cedar City, and was already the mother of three line children. After the first agitation of the assembled group had subsided, Waldrup and tbe smith retired to the smithy to talk tbe matter over. Devotedly as the smith loved his wife, he fully admitted Waldrup’s superior claims, and it was in the end decided that she herself should decide between them. They accordingly returned to the sitting room, where, after a torrent of tears and self-reproaches, the wife came to the conclusion that she ought to return to her first husband. Suddenly dropping her head, however, on the blacksmith’s shoulder, she declared with bitter lamentations that she could not leave her children. The smith “ eyed her wistfully” for a moment, and then said, “ You shall take them, my dear.” Some hours later, when the steamboat St. Luke stopped at the landing, Waldrup went on board with bis “thickly veiled and still weeping wife,” and the blacksmith followed leading the children. The boat’s bell rang for the starting. The dread moment of separation was at hand. The captain, the crew, and the passengers were affected to tears with the touching scene. “ With great drops rolling down his tawny cheeks,” the smith kissed the children one after the other, and bade tbe mother an eternal good bye. 110 then shook hands lo ig and earnestly with Waldrup, and walked quietly to the shore. He never turned his face towards the boat, which soon passed out of sight, but strode on with head bowed down to tbe home where the voice of his wife and children would welcome him no more. Let us hope that his grief was sincere.