A DREADFUL SCENE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 619, 6 February 1879, Page 2

A DREADFUL SCENE.

A late New York letter says : — " In a squalid, wretched apartment, occupied by a negro woman, in one of the poorest quarters of Newark, N.J., there was enacted at three o'clock this morning as intensely dramatic a scene as any ever witnessed on the stage. Three persons were in the room at the time — Auntie Malain, the negress ; Dickson Gardner, a coal-black negro, who has. a wife and children, and Elizabeth Moran, a white Irish girl. The latter was on her deathbed, in fact almost drawing her last breath. She was a strangely beautiful girl — small, lithe, and willowy framed, with that striking face which is only to be met with in the purest types of Irish beauty. She had been employed as a domestic in a boarding-house in Newark, where Gardner acted as butler. By some means he had effected her ruin, and last Monday she gave birth to a child. During Tuesday night it rained frightfully, yet Gardner removed her from the house in which the accouchement occurred to Auntie Malain's room, a few blocks distant. The exposure to the inclemency of the weather, and subsequent neglect — for there was no one at her side to give her even a drink of water — told upon the poor girl, and she gradually sank, till her death became but a question of time. At ten o'clock last night Gardner entered her room, and sat by her side on the bed. Auntie Malain was there too, and together they watched the sands of the wronged girl's life slowly but surely slipping away. She never spoke, and seemed utterly oblivous of their presence, until three o'clock this morning, when she fixed her glassy eyes upon the negro. In a moment she seemed imbued with the strength of a giantess. The wasted cheeks flushed, the wan form quiverrd with emotion, the glassy eyes Bcintillated with anger, and springing up on her miserable pallet, she seized the startled negro by the throat in a vyce-like grip. " You black devil !" Bhe hissed ; " you fiend incarnate ! Now that I've got you I'll hold on to you, and drag you down, down, down, to the hell to which you have sent me. Curses on you ! you develish hound ! May your every breath prove a torture to you 1 May you be stricken down with every ill ! May your life be imbittered, and may you one day roast in the flames to which lam going ! You monster ! You you ever hope for pardon 1 Do you think God can forgive my ruin at your hands 1 No ! Curses black and deep, on you ! No, no, no !" and she shrieked the last words in a frenzy. The exertion was too much for her, and, relaxing her grip upon the throat of the halfsuffocated negro, she fell back, dead, upon the pillow, while the black betrayer rushed from the room with his eyes fairly starting from their sockets.