MELANCHOLY
——
The Matrimonial Experiencesof Colonel Ruth Goshen.
The Turkish Giant Robbed of his Wife, his Educated Goat, his Money and his Horse and Carriage—The Perfidy of a Man Whom he Befriended—A very High Life Elopement Which Excites the Show People—Moving for a Divorce.
That matrimonial misery may afflict the highest as well as the lowest was never better illustrated than in the affliction which has overtaken Colonel Ruth Goshen, the Giant whose enormous figure has towered in Brooklyn for the past two weeks. The Colonel is one of the most widely known celebrities of his class in the United States, His acquaintances agree that he possesses agreeable manners and a confiding disposition; and although in stature he might easily vie with the lofty inhabitants of Brobdignag, he is but a child in the dark and crooked ways of this wicked world. Like the Thane of Frife, the Colonel has a wife, and well may he ask in tremulous tones, as he did this morning "Where is she now?" If fact Mrs. Colonel Ruth Goshen has eloped with a showman and the gigantic hero of many gory fields who has been compelled by
PERFIDY OF HIS SPOUSE
to assume the role of the injured husband is taking stops toward the procurement of a divorce.
People who are in the habit of visiting shows will remember Colonel Goshen, and thousands who have seen him on the street will remember his burly form and his good natured face which beams from under his broad brimmed hat as big and shining as a locomotive headlight. This worthy descendent of the Brobdignagian race first saw the light of day forty-three years ago in the City of Jerusalem, Palestine. He is of Hebrew and Turkish descent. At present he stands seven feet eleven inches in his stocking feet, weighs 625 pounds, measures ninety-one inches round the chest and ninety-five inches round the waist. His arms are of the thickness of saplings and his fist possesses the ponderosity of the hammer of Thor. The Colonel has served in several eventful campaigns. He was in the Turkish army at Jerusalem, and fought through the Crimean war, the war of Italian independence and the campaign of Maxmilian in Mexico. His great height made him a fine target for the enemy; he was wounded in numerous engagements and at present has seventeen bullet holes in his body, which seem to have had as much effect as they would on the hide of the elephant or the rhinocerous.
About eighteen years ago the ever vigilant P.T. Barnum discovered the Colonel while traveling abroad and brought him to this country, where he was placed on exhibition, and for a time he was the wonder of the immense crowds which flocked to see him. He had a prosperous experience on this side of the water and accumulated many shekels. His existence flowed pleasantly and uneventfully along until the Spring of 1862 when his heart was smitten by the dart of Cupid. It was in a Delancey street boarding house, on the great East side of New York, that
THE COLONEL'S CHARMER
first dawned upon his entranced gaze, Her name, she said, was Augusta Mattice. She was tall and dark, with the rotundity of a Dudu, combined with the easy grace of a Donna Julia. When the weighty warrior first saw her she was blushing amid the shade of widow's weeds, and supervising the operation of a first class boarding house. Her impersonation of the bereft widow was perfect, and although subsequent inquiry has proved that the deceased Mattice was a mythical personage, the Colonel was unsuspicious, and after a few months' billing and cooing after the manner of the turtle dove, assuaged her grief by taking her for his wife. After the marriage the giant continued his starring tours, and his wife, who at the time had barely turned twenty-five years, accompanied him. They visited various parts of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Palestine. The circumstances of the difficulties which resulted in the elopement of the wife and the commencement the divorce proceedings are best told in the words of the Colonel, who told his story to an Eagle reporter this morning, with brimming eyes, in the great Dime Museum, No. 430 Fulton Street.
THE COLONEL'S TALE OF WOE.