VOL. XV. ISIEW DLOOMFIELD, TUESDAY, OOTOU1S11 18, 1881. NCX 42. THE TIMES. An Independent Family Newspaper, IB F0BUBHIDCVBRY TUIIDAY T F. MORTIMER & CO. TUUBIH I I N VARIABLY IN ADVANCE. f 1.50 PEIt VKtll, POSTAGE Fit IOC HO CTS. FOIt 6 ItlOXTHS. To subscribers residing In Tnm oountv, where we have no postage to pay. a dlsnnuHt of 25 cents trom the above terms will be made If payment Is made Injvdvance. W Advertising rates furnished upon appllcn tlon. A Romance of the Sea. TWENTY years or more back In the past, Mrs. Forsythe, had been a very pretty woman ; but after her hus band had taken her to Europe, and she returned, with her baby, she never seemed quite the same person. A night of Bhlpwreck and disaster, which ehe experienced on the voyage home, had produced a marked change both in her looks and her happy, cheerful nature. Just why this should have wrought such a lasting eflect, however, was not plain until long afterward, when people found out all that had happened. Telling the story herself, Mrs. For sythe snld that Bhe had fancied from the moment the steamer left Liverpool that something dreadful would take place hefore the voyage was over. The morn ing to begin with, was dark and ialcy, and everything had a gloomy appear ance. Then, before they had fairly got underway, the wind began to blow and the steamer rolled and creaked frightful ly. A storm was brewing, and on the second day of the voyage It raged over the ocean furiously. Lying ill in a stateroom, Mrs. For sythe knew very little about what was going on in the saloon or how her baby was faring with its nurse. Mr Forsythe said, however, that there was no need of alarm. Everything was quite as one must expect when at sea. By and by the storm would cease, of course, just as the captain said it would,and the steam er would reach her dock In New York safe and sound, as usual. But Mr. For sythe was engrossed in the pages of a work on the Sanskrit language, which he had hunted down in London, and at such a time nothing short of an earth quake was ever likely to disturb him. So there was little comfort to bo gained by his calm assurance. The second day wore away and also the third. Finally, night came on, black and terrible ; then three or four hours afterward there was a frightful hock, which seemed to threaten the steamer's instant destruction. Every, thing was in the wildest confusion be fore any one had time to think; and Mrs. Forsythe never was aware how her husband carried her on deck. Her one passionate desire was to have her baby in her arms ; but she and her husband both searched in vain for the nurse who bad. The passengers were crowding their way hither and thither, shouting to one another; the wind, rushing through the spars and rigging, whirled the eparks from the smokestack in every di rection ; and the tops of the waves flood ed the deck. A ship had run into the steamer's bow, and she was sinking, somebody said ; but no one stopped to ask questions. The all important thing was to secure a place in one of the life boats. Mrs. Forsythe, however, clung to an iron railing and waited waited years, it seemed for her husband, who had gone back to the cabin, to search again for the child. Bhe would never leave the steamer, she said, until it was found ; and she did not. One boat load after another pushed off into the darkness, and soon the deck was less crowded. Then she managed, by clinging to a guard rope, to reach the cabin door. At last, though, Mr. Forsyth appear ed, bearing the baby, wrapped in a rug, that he bad snatched from a sofa. Ue had found the child lying in a chair, where the darkness hid it until it cried. But there was no time for explanation. A boat was just then ready. In another moment or two they had gained places in it and were borne away, exhausted and bewildered. The rest of the night was full of hor ror. Threatened every moment by the enruged WBves, buffeted by the wind, and scarcely able to see one another, the men, women and children In the boat passed hour after hour praying for dny Jight ; but when the morning, at length, did break, it was the most terrible time of all for poor Mrs. Forsythe ; for now she saw Unit the baby she had been weeping over and praying for all night, while it had slept in her lup, under the shelter of heavy wrappings, was not her baby, but somebody's else. " Oh I Will, Will I" she cried, throw ing back the rug, so that her husband could see the child. " Look I There has been a horrible mistake I It Is not our baby at all !" Mr. Forsythe looked at the child dumbly a moment. All young babies had looked alike to htm until now, when he saw that there was a difference be tween this one and his own. Their baby did not have black eyes and brown skin ; nor was it as old as this child seemed to be. But, yes, it was quite possible that their child might be safe in one of the other boats. " WaitI Don'tglveup, Grace!" he said, huskily, as he saw her beginning to swoon. " Ours is in some one of the other boats and we Bball find it. I know we shall." " My baby 1 my poor baby " Mrs. Forsythe moaned covering her face with both hands and sinking hopelessly In his arms. The old sailors, who were rowing the boat with all their might toward a ship's sail they had descried In the distance, leaned on their oars, and for awhile the mutual anxiety for safety was forgotten. The women passengers near Mrs. For sythe took the unknown little child from her lap and hushed its crying, and tried to comfort her with their sympa thy ; but she did not hear them. Then there began again after a few minutes, the click of the rowlocks ; the boat went on steadily in the direction of the white, fluttering object coming up on the hori zon ; and Mr. Forsythe held his wife's pale face against his shoulderand waited. Something iiiust certainly happen to put them in possession of their little girl again, he thought. It was too dread ful to think about. But there was no other boat in sight anywhere on the ocean ; only the sail in the distance,' which continued to come nearer. This Mr. Forsythe watch ed Intently, with the others, whispering encouragement to his wife from time to time. The ship had already, perhaps, rescued some of the other boats, and his mind was full of comforting sugges tions, which, an hour or two later, bow ever, deserted him when they all were safe on the ship's deck. No one had seen any of the other boats. Nothing whatever was known of the wreck of the steamer, the captain said. The fact and reality presented no disguise of hope. They had lost their nurse and child In mid ocean, and there was not the ghost of a probability that they would ever see either again. They could only sail away with the ship to Its destina tl nation the same as the steamer's. " I never shall see my baby again. Will I Mrs. Forsythe said, strangely calm and looking far back in the wake of the ship. " Never, never again I'? He led her down into the cabin ; and she put out her arms for the other baby, that had taken the place of her own. It looked up from the woman's lap where it was lying, laughed and stretch ed its little arms toward her. From that moment she adopted it to her heart and kept it close to her. Mr. Forsythe used to say, years after ward, that her heart would have been broken had not the child won her affec tion by the strange preference it showed for her ; and, after they had arrived in New York, and tried, by advertising In the papers and every other means in their power, to ascertain the fate of their own child and to whom this one belonged, it was thought best by him to keep their misfortune a secret between them and carry the unknown baby home with them as theirs. That was how it came about the neighbors did not know that their son was really not their son until until morn than twenty years afterward. , - He was named Rupert and grew to be a tine, handsome boy ; but he did not resemble either Mr. or Mn. Forsythe. Home even said that he looked like a Bpaulard, and they themselves wonder ed not a little, as the years went by, who his parents were. The passenger list of the steamer in London, they ascertained, did not contain the . names of any persons In the cabin with an in fant except themselves ; nor could they remember having seen or heard another child durlug the three duys they were at sea before the accident occurred. It did not seem probable, either, that the child could have belonged to any of the steer age passengers, for, In that case, It would not have been in the saloon. By degrees however, the past faded away and spec ulation about the boy's parentage hud far less luterest for them than what Ills future was to be. He was bright and full of spirit; and, under Mr. Forsythe's scholarly manlpulallon,developed prom isingly from year to year. Bitting before the library fire winter evenings, Mrs. Forsythe used to watch both with great pleasure her husband bent over his favorite books, with Itu pert's glossy black head close to his, busy with the same employment. Bhe would build catles for the boy, too, now and then, and dreaded a little the lime when he would go away to college,where Mr. Forsythe iutended to send him; but it turned out, strangely enough, that before that time came her thoughts were turned back again to the baby she had lost, and all her affection and an guish for It were painfully revived. One afternoon, several years after the event which has been related, Mr. For sythe brought home with him from the city an odd-looking man, to take charge of his stable and garden. He had a weather-beaten face, was short and thick set, limped badly, had rings in his ears, and wore the sailor's conventional pea jacket and turpaulin hat. It was also discovered, when he had been about the premises for a few days, that both of his arms were profusely decorated with India-ink anchors and stare and that one of his fingers was missing. "You see, ma'am, I ain't much to look at, bein' rather the wus for wear," he said to Mrs. Forsythe, apologetically; "but I can cut and splice 'round the grounds and have an eye to most any thing that comes handy." This assertion proved to be quite true; and, taking up his quarters in a little room over the stable, he soon made him self at home and indlspenslble to the family. He had been at sea nearly all his life, he said, until he injured one of his feet. After that be had been obliged to make a shift to do something else, and hud hit on gardening. " It's a sort o' life that's gut poetry in It, you see," he explained, while trim ming the vines around the piazza, "and I kinder took to it one way and an other." When asked how it came about that he had lost the missing finger of his right hand, he scratched his head rtfleotively a moment, then sat down on the piazza steps and fell into an autobiographical mood that was not anticipated. "Unless I'm off my reckonin', It was hard on to eighteen year ago that the thing happened." he Bald. "I'd been crulsln' 'bout the Pacific, and gut sort o' tired o' the thing. So I took a fancy inter my head to try somethln' steady aboard o' a Liverpool steamer. Luck was always agin me, though, whenever I tried settlln' down to anythln' reg'ler; and the steamer went down afore we'd been out four days." ' He paused as Mrs. Forsythe came over to the end of the piazza where her husband was bis auditor, and then con tinued: " It was all over in ten minutes, you see; and the first anybody knowed, they were either splashin' round lu one o' the boats or rollin' on the waves. In ourboat there was more'n a dozen men an' women; but afore mornin' only my mate and me and a little babe was left. She turned right over, you .see, in spite of all we could do, and emptied everybody Inter the trough o' the sea. My hand gut caught, somehow, in the rowlock, and I give it such a yank that It tore that finger clean off; but I wasn't slow, for all that, in a-climbin' onto the bottom o' that boat. My mate he'd gut there fust and lent me a hand. " ' Jack, my man,' said he, a breathln' like a whale, 'we're in for it this time, anyhow." " ' Bo be It,' said I, for I was a little reckless in those days ami didn't care much what happened." " But you said," Mrs. Fbrsythe inter rupted, nervously interested, " that there was a baby J"' '! Yes, ma'am. Tom, my mate, had gut a-holt of it somehow la in the water while tryln' to save its , mother. 'Look a-'ere, Jack,' said he, when we was astraddle the boat. " Here's the baby that belonged to the woman in the bow. What on earth'U we do with It?" " Hang on to lt,I sup pose, for we can't throw it overboard, said I." "And was it alive?"" Mrs. Forsythe asked eagerly. " Oh 1 yes, ma'am. Alive and well. Tom wrung out his shirt and wrapped the little thing up with It; and then we took turns a-holden' it an' keepin' it warm agin our bodies till mornin'. A Portagese brig picked us up then, along with a lot of the Albion's passen gens that it had already rescued." " The Albion 1" exclaimed Mr. For sythe, starting from his chair. " Was that the name of the steamer ?" " It was my baby I my baby 1" Mrs. Forsythe cried, now losing control of herself and dropping down in front of the man. ' Tell me more all quick. " Why, ma'am" he said, rathei startled, "that's just what another lady said, when we took the child aboard the the brig. 'It's mine! rnlnel' said she glvin' a shriek and runnln' toward us. Are you the same lady ?" "No, nol But where is tbe child? What became of it?" . " The lady took it the fureign-lookln' lady. You see Bhe had lost hern aboard the steamer, and when she saw that this 'ere baby was not the one, I says : 'Ma'am, it's the baby of the woman that's drowned. My mate here saved it." Then she hugged it in her arms and cried over it, and said she'd keep it always." Mrs. Forsythe stood up, placed her hands to her head and tried to enter the house; but she would have fallen had not her husband thrown his arm about her and helped her in. A few minutes afterward he found tbe old sailor limping up and down the lawn in the dusk, with bis hands in his pockets, meditating evidently on the ex traordinary effect his narrative had pro duced. Tbe brig, he said, was bound to Lisbon, and carried them and the pas sengers it had picked up to that port. The woman who had taken the child looked like an Italian, but she Bpoke English as well as anybody. He didn't know what her name was ; but when she left the brig at Lisbon she went to some place in the south of France, from which she Bent back fo his and mate himself a purse of five hundred franos. After they bad squandered the money, they shipped on an English vessel for a voyage to South America, and had never since seen or heard of anybody who was aboard the Albion when she was wrecked. That was all tbe Information that could be gained from the man, but neither Mr. or Mrs. Forsythe doubted that the child was theirs. The woman who had taken it was probably the mother of Rupert. In other words, by a strange series of events, they had ex changed children. Sitting before the fire-until far into the night, Mrs. For sythe brought back out of the dead past her little girl's face and lived over again much of the agony she had experienced long ago. The child bad been alive all these years, perhaps while she believed her drowned. Bhe had been growing up somewhere with strangers believing them her parents, calling another woman mother. They had seen the little thing begin to walk and had taught her the first words she spoke. Possibly they had also watched her grow to be a fair young glrl,and she was their daugh ter now. Or perhaps, after all she was dead, burled away off In a foreign land ; and, instead of the tall, slender girl who resembled her, there was only a little child's tombstone standing In some lone, ly, forgotten place, where the weeds grew over the mound before It. Oh I was there any way she could find her, that she could know the truth ? Could not tbe whole wide world be searched ? Mr. Forsythe said that the list of pas sengers who sailed on the ill-fated steam er could, of course, still be found In the account the newspapers published of the disaster, Bad possibly it might give some clue to an Italian lady among them, but he met with disappointment when he looked over the list the next day, in the city. None of the passengers appeared to be Italian. " We must write to tbe oompany's office In Liverpool," Mrs, JiTorsy tbe said, ."and find out whether the list In the papers was correct. Oh 1: Will, I would like to go over there myself!: A mouth later, when lb was ascertain, ed that there had been two passengers from Bayonne on the steamer, a Madam Lolzeau and Mile. Beaufort, the wish Mrs. Forsythe had expressed began to be seriously considered. It seemed to. her (jiite probable that Madam Lolzeau was the lady who had taken her child, and she could not rest until she had made an effort to find her. In fact, when autumn came and Rupert entered college, Mr. Forsythe was prevailed on to set out on the undertaking, and they sailed direct to Franee. Tbe interest of tbe story, however, as it was told after ward, lay more- wiih Kupert, perhaps during the next year than with the wanderings of his foster parent, for accident gave him an opportunity to distinguish himself before he bad com pleted his second college term. In his nineteenth year young Forsythe was tall, broad shouldered, energetic, and attractive looking. He had well shaped features clear olive complexion, black curly hair, and dark eyes, that gave his face a bright, intelligent ap pearance. Whatever he undertook to do he did with a will, whether It was mastering tbe grammar of .a dead lan. guage or performing feats, in tbe gym nasium, and accordingly, it was not long before he became popular. While skating on a lake near the col lege, one moonlight night in January, with a merry company of students .and a bevy of fair companions from tbe town, it chanced that a serious mistake befell one of the young ladles, and that Forsythe, like the true knight he was, risked life and limb to rescue her. She had ventured alone on a dangerous place in the Ice and fallen through. The crash and her scream threw every, body Into confusion for a moment, and tbe crowd that rushed to her assistance made the chance for her escape from drowning very critical, as the ice in all directions near her instantly threatened to give way; but Forsythe, qulcker-wlt-ted and more self-possessed than the others, shouted to them to stay back, and then, throwing oft his coat, began to creep out on the ice alone. "Don't be frightened! Cling to the ice! I will reach you in a moment!" he Bald, encouragingly. The young lady Miss Beatrice Llnds ley) was too terrified, however, to know what she was doing ; and, instead of holding on and waiting she tried to raise herself out of the water. This struggle exhausted her strength, and she soon fell back, uttering a faint cry, and sunk out of sight. Forsythe kicked off his boots, threw himself forward, and the next moment had his arm around her and was floun dering in the midst of the broken ice. It was a desperate maneuver, and, had not his companions by this time ' obtained some boards and come to his relief, might not have proved a success, ful one. Miss Lindsley was now uncon scious and difficult to hold ; but he man aged, by making a great effort, to fight his way to the place where the boards made the ice firmer. Then, with aid, he drew the young lady from the water and carried her to her frightened friends on the shore. The next day the affair was the chief topic of conversation among the stu dents and in town. Mr. Lindsley, who was one of the prominent citizens, call, ed on Forsythe, to express his gratitude in flattering terms ; and the local paper published a glowing account of the acci dent, congratulating the community on an escape from a sad calamity and char, acterizlng Forsythe as exceptlonably manly, brave.and dariug. Miss. Linda ley was, in fact, the handsomest and most accomplished young lady in the town and, consequently, held a high, place in the estimation of her many friends. ",., " I would rather be Forsythe, than, have the learning of the whole faculty;
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