AFFECTING EVIDENCE OF THE GERMAN LOSSES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 1194, 15 December 1871, Page 3

AFFECTING EVIDENCE OF THE GERMAN LOSSES.

"We take the following from an English paper : — A few days ago I had occasion to call upon a gentleman' residing in the immediate vicinity of Barmen. He was temporarily absent when I called, and I was received by a young lady in deep mourning, whose thin, pale-half-transparent face bore the unmistakable mark of a threatening earlyjdeath. I had called I for some special information on (ha subject of therelief of the poor iv Elberfeld and Barmen. As tlie young lady waß unable to give me the papers referring to the matter, I was s >own into a room, there to await the return of the master of the house. There my eyes fell on a large family Bible which lay on a side-table. I could not resist the temptation to read. I found that the gentleman whose arrival I was awaiting there had had a family of eight children, four sons and four daughters. His wife had died some twenty years ago, and all their daughters had died in their childhood. Of the sons, the eldest had fallen at Duppel, in the Danish war of 1864. Folio wiug the entry of his death, his father's haud had traced the words i — " Woe is unto me ! The pride of my house is laid low, and the prop of my old age hath been taken away 1" In 1866, two sons, the one an officer, the other a soldier in the Pruss : an army, had met their death for King and Fatherland, one at Gitshin, the other at Koniginhof. Here, again, the joint record of the father's bereavement was followed by a few words of intensest grief, but also pious resignation ! — " Lord, Thy hand is heavy upon me. My misery is more than I can bear ; yet Thy will be done. Thou knowest best." Then came the entry of the marriage of the youngest and last surviving son, on Sunday, 17th July, IS7O, with the broken young rose whom I had seen— there could be no doubt about it, as she told me her father would soon be back ; and then came the final entry:— "My Oscar— the youngest, the last, the best beloved of my sons — died on the 21st of August, of wounds received in the accursed battle of Mars-la-Tour. The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away. Praised be the name of the Lord." But the entry was blurred and scarcely legible, bearing witness that, however willing and stout the spirit had been to bear, the flesh had given way. I closed the book with a feeling of deep sadness, and rapidly regained my chair, trembling lest the bereaved old man should suddenly come in, and read in my troubled face some telling indication of the indiscretion which I had committed in reading hia family records. I had, however, fortunately ample time to recover my composure before the gentleman made his appearance at last. He was a tall old man, but woefully bowed down, clearly less with age than by sorrow and suffering. He received me with great urbanity, aad kindly placed at my disposal all the information which it was in his power to give on the subject of my viait to him. When I left him I pondered deeply on the melancholy results of the mad ambition of princes, and the wretched love of glory of nations. Here was a whole once happy family hud low in the brief space of a few years.