It was recorded in the newspapers that the dead body of an aged man had been found, tied up in a coffee bag, and floating in the East river. His throat was cut from ear to ear, and it was supposed he had been murdered, but later developments explained the mystery. The name of the deceased was subsequently ascertained; he belonged to one of the oldest and most respectable families of Connecticut, and was related to one of its former governors. The individual in question spent the morning and noon of his life in the lap of luxury; in old age, however, his wealth, wife, children, and nearly all his kindred, were taken away from him, and he became a man acquainted with many sorrows. Some months previous to the time when his body was found, and while actually suffering from hunger, it so happened that he entered a certain dwelling for the purpose of asking alms. The principal inmate of that dwelling was a widow who had once been on the most intimate terms with the family of the beggar, having been born in the same town. The friends of other days recognized each other, a long conversation ensued, which recalled a thousand recollections of childhood, and they were very happy. The only thought which oppressed the spirit of the mendicant was, that his bones, when he came to die, would be deposited in the soil of strangers, and his only prayer was that he might be buried among his kindred. His kind friend assured him that, if her own life was spared, the desire of his heart should be fully gratified.
Weeks passed on, and, contrary to the wishes of his friend, the old man became an inmate of the almshouse. In process of time the silver cord of the pilgrim’s life was broken, and he was buried in the public graveyard. Subsequently to this his body was disinterred, used for purposes of dissection, and rudely thrown into the river. In the meanwhile the widow had sent to the coroner to inquire how she might obtain the pauper’s body, as she wished to bury him elsewhere than in Potter’s Field, but she could meet with no encouragement. A number of days was the man’s body tossed to and fro in the East River, but by the hand of Providence it was washed ashore and given in charge to the coroner. This gentleman suspected that the deceased was the friend of the widow who had consulted him some days before, and it so happened that his suspicions were well founded, for the body in due time was recognized. It was given into the custody of the good woman, who had it placed in a decent coffin, and the aged pauper was buried in the vault of the W——, in Connecticut, by the side of his wife and children. It is indeed a fact that fiction is often not one-half so strange as truth; and it is also certain that human life is but a dream, and the ways of God unsearchable.
