A DEGENERATE SON.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 43, 13 February 1885, Page 23

A DEGENERATE SON.

A middle-aged man, says the New York Herald, of the 27th ult., with blue eyes, brown hair, and closely cropped beard, walked up lo the rail of the Jefferson Market Police Court a few days before, when the name Michael William Balfe was called by the crier. The prisoner was arraigned on a charge of assault and battery preferred by Mary Thompson, but, he denied tbe accusation, and in answer to the statutory inquiry replied " I am not guilty. I never raised my hand to a woman in my life and can prove it." He was released on bail. The prisoner, it is pitiful to add, was the only living but discarded son of the great composer Balfe. In the supplementary proceedings at the court he spoke freely of his chequered and disappointed life. He had been originally inteuded f or the Royal Navy, but injuring his leg, for a time, in field sports, that object was given up, and for several years he spent a dissipated and spendthrift life on the Continent. His father secured him a commission in the Bast India Company, oat of which he drew 200 rupees a niontn, but a year of that was enough for young Balfe, and he threw up his post. After a second violent altercation with his father, the latter discarded him, and, borrowing some money from his friends, he started in the iron business. This venture failed, and it proved to be the first of a long series of failures. He was in turn an usher's assistant in a New York theatre, gasfitter, blacksmith, and runner of an express wagon on tbe Broadway. He got married to an English governess, a Miss Maglin, and is now a journeyman gas-fitter iv New York.