Queer
things happen in this old world of ours. Away back in the fifties, there lived
in a country town within forty miles of Hamilton, a young Englishman who became
acquainted with a girl of English parentage, and in due course of time they
were convinced that if ever a love match was made in heaven, surely it was
their. They married, and to better their condition in life, as the outlook in
those days in the Canadian village was not very bright, they went west and
settled in Illinois. Three or four children were born to them, and they were as
happy as a family could be. The man worked at whatever presented, but, in an
evil hour, he decided to go into the saloon business, where money could be made
more easily than by the sweat of his brow. It was humiliating to his good wife,
who was well-educated and a Christian, and she felt that it was a dragging down
of herself and the children from a proper position in life. As he was one of
his own best customers at the bar, the happy home was turned into confusion.
The war broke out in 1861, and the man, having a chance to sell his saloon,
availed himself of it, and he enlisted in the first cavalry regiment raised in
Illinois under President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 men. Being an educated man,
and well qualified for clerical work, he was appointed orderly sergeant of his
company. The regiment was in one of the first battles, and had the misfortune
to be captured, and nearly the entire regiment became prisoners of war. In the
early days of the war, neither the union nor the confederate governments had
any desire to hold prisoners, so the regiment was paroled and sent home under
pledge not to again enter the service unless duly exchanged. While awaiting
parole, the sergeant became infatuated with a young woman living in the
southern town, and after returning to Illinois with his regiment for muster out
of service, he visited his family, remaining only a few days, and when he left
home, he said he was going to re-enlist under the old captain, who was then
raising a regiment for the three years’ service. That was the last his wife or
children ever saw or heard of him. No tidings coming back to them, and not
knowing what regiment he might have enlisted in, the faithful wife had come to
the sad conclusion after months of inquiry that her husband had either been
killed in battle or had died from wounds or sickness in a hospital. The war
came to an end, and the wife mourned for the soldier who did not return. That
he was dead, she had no reason to doubt, for even in his worst moods he was
never unkind to her or the children. The mother devoted herself to caring for
the children, having to work early and late to provide them with food and
clothing. The oldest boy, who was not more than eight years of age when his
father left, helped his mother with the small wages he could earn, and at night
and during spare hours in daytime, he laid the foundation of an education that
in after years gave him a prominent position. The time came when this boy,
grown to manhood, was able to relieve his mother from having to work for a
living, but he also paid the expenses of educating a younger brother and his
sisters. Some friends suggested to the widow that she should apply to the
government for a pension, but when her claim was investigated, it was thrown
out because there was no proof of how or when or where her husband died. In
later years, the widow returned to the Canadian town where she had spent her
girlhood days and where she had been married. The son, who was in Hamilton
temporarily, told the writer the history, which resulted in another attempt to
bring the case of the mother before the commissioner of pensions at Washington.
At a preliminary hearing, it was deemed prudent to first write the captain of
the company, who was then living in Chicago, to find any was that might lead up
to the death of the husband, but he had no information beyond the mustering out
of the regiment after the disastrous fight in Missouri, when it was gobbled up
by the confederate forces under General Price. Pending the arrival of the
letter from the captain, notice came from the pension department at Washington,
that a man of the name of the husband was then drawing a pension for service
rendered in 1861, in the same company and regiment of cavalry, and that man was
then living in the city of Toronto. Like a thunder clap from a clear sky came
this news to the son who for forty years had mourned for his father who he
supposed had died on the field of battle. Here was that father living within
fifty miles of where his mother had been making her home for years. What was he
to do under the circumstances? His mother had almost reached the end of life’s
journey, having completed the allotted years of three score and ten. All these
forty years, she had mourned as dead the husband to whom she had plighted her
life more than a half century before in the little Canadian town. Would it be
wise to dispel the illusion in which she lived? The writer was in Toronto a
short time after word came that the husband and father was there, and at the
request of the son, he hunted up the man and found him living in comfortable
circumstances with a woman he called his wife. When the son was fully satisfied
with the perfidy of the father whose memory he had worshipped as having given
his life on the field of battle, his reverence was turned to hatred and he
registered a vow that he would never come in contact with him nor look upon his
face. The aged mother is still living. Whether or not she has been informed
that her husband lives within fifty miles of her home with another woman whom
he calls his wife, the writer does not know. More than one incident of this
kind has come under our personal knowledge during the seven years we have been
in Hamilton.
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The Burning Springs, in Barton
township, five miles from Hamilton, were noted for their medical properties
about the year 1850. There was not what now be called a large summer hotel on
the property, which was for some reason allowed to run down and get badly out
of repair. An enterprising tavern keeper
named J. Hayward, thought he saw a speculation in leasing the property and
fixing it up for the accommodation of invalids, and he spent quite a bit of
money in giving a through renovation. Water with a sulphurous taste and a smell
like unto rotten eggs has always been supposed to have efficacious power in the
curing of scrofulous or cutaneous tumors, rheumatism and kindred diseases of
the blood, our forefathers having drank so eagerly of sulphur springs water as
do the invalids of the present day. The other an aged Hibernian gentleman and
his life partner were coming up James street, the wife carrying a large tin
bucket that would hold a couple of gallons. They were strangers in Hamilton,
but away back in their country home they had heard of the curative properties
of the sulphur springs near Ancaster, and they came in order to get a bucketful
to carry back with them to their home. The old gentleman and lady were pictures
of health, and although they may have passed three score years and ten, yet
their appearance indicated that the angel of death was not camping very close
in their trail. Probably the waters from the Ancaster springs were intended to
bring new life and hope to some loved one, and they cheerfully came on the
pilgrimage with faith that some relief would come to the afflicted one. That
old gentleman’s inquiry brought back to memory the number of noted springs that
were within a half dozen miles of this city and that in the long ago were so
eagerly patronized by those who thought their sands of life were fast ebbing
away. A few weeks ago, in these Musings, we mentioned that Mr. Dalley kept a
drug store in this city away back in the forties, that everyday he received
from Ancaster a fresh supply of the health-giving and blood-purifying waters
for the use of a large number of customers, who bought it by the jugful and
drank it instead of well water. Now and then we hear of persons going to
sulphur springs in the United States as well as the resorts here in Canada, who
could get as effective treatment within an hour’s ride from Hamilton. A few
days ago, a young man was sent from this city to a noted sulphur springs in
Pennsylvania. He had been an invalid for a year or more from a disease of the
stomach, and he became so reduced in strength that two members of an Oddfellows’
lodge in this city had to accompany him, the lodge bearing all the expense, for
the poor fellow had spent his last dollar during his year of enforced idleness on
account of sickness. Surely the old springs near Hamilton have not lost their
medicinal qualities, and they might be found just as efficacious as they were
half a century ago.
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Baldheaded people are usually very
sensitive to any reference to the absence of a capillary covering for their
brain box; and how it makes one squirm to have a barber run his fingers through
the thin locks and sarcastically ask if they don’t want their hair trimmed? A
barber in the city of Washington had a baldheaded victim in his chair and thus
decanted on a new remedy for the cure of baldness; “Take a dozen white
potatoes,” said the barber, “and pare them lengthwise from end to end, instead
of crosswise as usual. Boil them in a quart of water, and drain the water off
into a bottle and add a teaspoon of salt. Rub this compound into the scalp
three times a day, and it will change a thin, moth-eaten head of hair into a
thick and vigorous crop,” said the barber, proudly rubbing his own head. “I
used potato water three times a week for three months. Look at me now.” Ever
since the days of the prophet Elijah, whom the wicked children jeered and
shouted, “thou baldhead”, has poor bald-topped humanity been looking for a
remedy that would restore the hirsute covering. They sent out bears to eat up
the wicked children for making fun of the unfortunate old prophet, and many a
baldhead would be glad could he set the bears on the barber who jestfully asks,
“Do you want your hair trimmed?” There may be something in the remedy proposed
by the Washington barber, and before bedtime this Saturday night, there will be
many a pot of potato boiling in Hamilton, and heads soaked with the curative
liquid.
