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THE NURSE AND THE LOST BABY
Alice Bodington in the Open Court. I had
been residing some months with a naval officer and his wife,
Captain and Mrs. R., near a seaport town in the South of
England. Mrs. R. was devoted to household pursuits, a
model of quiet common sense and industry. One afternoon as
I sat in their drawing-room with Mrs. R. and her husband the
conversation turned upon the subject of appearances after
death, and I remarked that the evidence seemed to me
irresistible that such appearances were possible. Mrs.
R. hesitated a little while, then looked toward her husband
and said, "Now if I knew you will not laugh at me, I should
like to tell you something that happened to me." The
substance of her story was as follows: She was living in
Spain with her brother at the time of her marriage with
Captain R. His first wife had died about a year
previously, leaving a baby boy who had been placed out at
nurse. When Captain R. and his second wife returned to
England, the nurse to whom the baby had been confided had
disappeared and could nowhere be traced, to the great
distress of the father. Before rejoining his ship
Captain R. and his wife went to London, where they occupied
furnished lodgings. The rooms were so arranged that
access to the bedroom could only be attained through the
sitting-room; there was no second door. |
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Mrs. R. informed me that she awoke one night and observed that
the fire was still burning brightly in the sitting-room and at the
same time she felt a consciousness that someone was there. As
she looked at the door she saw a very beautiful lady enter the
bedroom, accompanied by a poorly dressed woman carrying in her arms
a child, in a yellow pelisse. The lady came up to the side of the
bed and smiling said to Mrs. R.:
"This is Johnny; you will know Johnny again."
She turned as she spoke (or seemed to speak) and pointed to the
woman and child, and in a second the whole vision. had vanished.
HIS FIRST WIFE.
So realistic had it been that Mrs. R. turned to
see if there were any other possible mode of exit that the
sitting-room door, but there was none. She then awoke her
husband, and told him what she had seen. He said:
"I do not know what it means, but you have exactly described
my first wife."
Mrs. R. tried to divert her thoughts from what she endeavored to
convince herself must have been a dream. Some days after she
and her husband visited Westminster Abbey, and on their return,
endeavoring to take a short cut, they lost their way in one of the
narrow streets that abound in that neighborhood. Suddenly Mrs. R.
said to her husband:
"That is the woman I saw, and that is the baby."
Coming toward them in fact was a poorly dressed woman carrying a
child wearing a yellow pelisse. Captain R. advised caution,
but in passing the woman herself:
"That seems a fine little boy of yours." "I wish I could find
them he belongs to." said the woman: "he isn't mine; his father
is an officer in the navy."
Finally, whether wisely or unwisely, they decided to take the
child solely--as I understood--and the strange evidence of the
words, "This is Johnny; you will know Johnny again." The baby
of the yellow pelisse grew up, and himself entered the navy, and at
the time his stepmother told me the story she was wearing mourning
for him. One stormy night he had fallen from the mast and was
never seen again. It is a fanciful notion, but one would like
to think the mother found her boy again, when he was lost to earthly
eyes forever. Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, New York -
February 7
1892
Sleep my child and
peace attend thee,
All through the night
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,
Hill and dale in slumber sleeping
I my loved ones' watch am keeping,
All through the night.
Old English Lullaby
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