A STRANGE STORY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LI, Issue 5599, 4 February 1879, Page 7

A STRANGE STORY.

(Boston Herald.) The suicide of Captain Charles R. Power, of Somerville, committed lately, on the steps of his house on Rowe street, ends a personal history which had its elements of romance as powerful as anything over hatched behind the spectacles of Wilkie Collins. Many years ago Charles R. Power was a sailor lad of 17 or 18 years. With only his youth and good looks to advance his interests, he fell in love with a bright, attractive young woman, whom he met at a social gathering of the younger members of the Salem street Orthodox Church in this city. Her name was Amelia, and she was the only daughter and heiress of old Dr Hollis, well known in the North End, and, indeed, throughout the whole neighbourhood. The doctor was rich; the roving suitor was poor, and without a profession : but love smoothed out these inequalities, Miss Hollis fancied the young mariner, and when he left Boston in a certain memorable month at the age of 19, no prouder or happier mortal ever breathed on this mundane planet, for Amelia was his affianced wife, and he was the first mate of a Liverpool packet, a staunch and goodly vessel, belonging to a strong firm, and engaged in a profitable trade. The voyage to Liverpool was a long and weary one, but the lover’s confidence diminished the suspense he felt. His ship did not return immediately, but carried freight to various parts of Europe. In the meantime he received news from home and learned that Amelia Hollis had given her hand to a gentleman whose acquaintance, it was said, she formed after Power’s departure. His grief and disappointment nearly crushed him. He left the sea, and for eight years led a wild sort of life on the continent, got into horrible habits of dissipation, and probably permitted his passions to reign unchecked. After the lapse of the period of eight years he straightened up, reformed his ways, and determined to be a man. He shipped on a vessel bound for Boston, unable to resist the temptation of beholding the happiness of her who was to have been his. On his arrival in this city he went to his old home, visited all his old haunts, and was as nice and exemplary a young man as you would meet between this office and East Boston. His old associates gathered about him, and they attended social entertainments and led a gay city life. She heard of him, but they never met. Presently he grew restless again; the old feeling gnawing at his heart would not let him remain in Boston, and down to the sea he went again. The “ briny ” was his home after that. Ho crossed and re-crossed the ocean, and in the course of a few years left Boston as master of the good ship Archer. Tears and years went by. The young man had become bronzed and grizzled, and spoke in a deep tone. He was still captain of the Archer when twenty-five years had elapsed since the engagement with Amelia Hollis. One day, while he was at his lodgings in this city, he received a letter in a woman’s handwriting inviting him to meet her at the store of Crosby and Lane at a certain time. The letter was not signed. The thought flashed upon him that it was from his old love, whom, in all these twenty-five years, he had not forgotten. The wildest scenes at sea had not dimmed her image in his heart, where ho still carried it. He compared the handwriting with that in the letters of auld lang syne, and had his suspicions developed into a conviction. He visited the store at the specified time, and there met her for the first time since they parted as lovers. After the greetings were over, and they had talked of their mutual experience during the quarter of a century, the lady informed him that she had been divorced from her husband. What he learned at the interview convinced him that she had always loved him, and that her marriage was not the result of any coldness toward him. Within three or four weeks of this meeting they were married, and the long delayed happiness of the captain was realised at last. They went to live at her father’s, on Salem street, but subsequently removed to Rowe street, Somerville. The lady was then the mother of two grown young people, a son and a daughter, The captain: had abandoned the sea at his wife’s urgent nqoest, and was withoutan occupation, except

that which the management of some property he owned in Colorado supplie I him with. Finally the doctor died, and left a large sum of money to his daughter. The captain’s family circle was for some time after this •* happy one, but the want of a settled occupation at last produced its invariable effects upon him, and shadows began to creep across the threshold of his comfortable home. The time came when a dreadful evil bad to be acknowledged as forming a part of their married life, and incompatibility of temper compelled a separation. The captain went to Colorado, and spent some weeks tiying to drown his unhappiness in the cares of property; bob be failed', and dissipation laid its hands upon him. He shook off the lempation, however, after yielding to it for a brief while, and returned to the Fast, and managed, after three months had passed, to effect a reconciliation with his wife. But the old evil again visited the household, and after long and ineffectual struggles to destroy its Influence, Mrs Power suddenly left her husband, and took up her residence with her daughter, in Newton. Captain Power at eoce fell into the deepest melancholy—a condition in which he remained intermittently up to the period of his death. He met his wife on the street some months ago, and endeavoured to obtain an interview with her; but -her son, who accompanied his mother, possibly dreading a scene, tried equally hard to prevent an interview. A policeman, who happened, to be standing by, urged by his notion or duty, felt called upon to protect the lady, and compelled the desperate captain to give up h?« purpose. The effect of this unsuccessful attempt at reconciliation produced such an impression on the captain’s mind that his friends considered him insane, and had him removed to the asylum at Taunton. He did not remain here long before the fact of his sanity was established, and two or three weeks ago ho. was released. From that time until he shot himself on the steps of his wife’s house and his former home in Somerville, his comparatively cheerful spirit induced his friends to believe that the weight of his trouble was lightened. This was the ending of a romance which began in the old Salem street Orthodox Church, and the incidental actors in the various stages of the melancholy drama are probably many of them still among us.