Phenix Gazette

From the Boston Daily Advertiser.

To the Honorable H. G. Otis, Mayor of the city of Boston.

SIR: I address you, because it is said of you that no one is too poor or too humble to be noticed by you. I address you as a Mayor because it is only in your official station that you can help me. I do it through the public prints for there are others who are unhappy like myself, from like causes, and for that, the remedy, if there is any must proceed from public authority; and lastly, because I do not feel that I have the right to obtrude myself, and my miseries on your notice, in a personal visit.

I am a widow, and the mother of two sons and one daughter. My husband was a sea-faring man; he strove hard to gain an honest living.-- He was successful till the turn of the times seemed to set the tide against him.

His departure from his home, which happened five years ago, on the 10th of the last month, was ordered to be his last, and to be followed by no return to it. Whatever there is yet of him. that was of earth, belongs to the bosom of the deep; what there was from heaven, (and I gratefully acknowledge how much there was of this) I trust I shall see and know again. The little of means that were left, I gathered, by the kindness of an only brother, who also is gone before me. I commended myself and my fatherless children to the care of Him, to whom alone the bereaved are encouraged to raise their thoughts and their hopes.

I have done all I could, by strict economy and prudent measures, to make my children intelligent and virtuous, and to enable them, by their own powers, to do well to themselves, and by their attainments to do well to others. I was prospered, and was grateful, and was as happy as the bereaved and remembered survivor of happy alliance can ever be. My oldest son approached to manhood with excellent promise. I have gazed on him, with tearful eye, for many an hour, when he knew it not, watching for the development of his manliness, and to admit to my heart the sweet consolations, which I cannot tell you of for there are no words for these,--the widow, and the mother, who sees in her son the worth. the beauty, and the manliness of him, who only she could so love, so lose, and so mourn, and forever, can feel what I mean, if there be no words to tell of them.

This treasure suddenly changed his accustomed habits, his gentle manner, his frank complacency. Clouds came where it used to be sunshine, and silence instead of cheerful remark; then came irregularity in the hours of returning to his home; then later and still later hours; and still deeper gathering of gloom over his once lovely and innocent expression. The eye that used to turn on me with graceful and reverential affection, was averted; and it visited me only with rapid and fitful glances. "What, my son," said I, "has overtaken you? Is there any sorrow that has crept into your heart?-- What is it? Here is the bosom into which you may pour it. Tell me, my son--you have no sorrow that is not my sorrow" The tears forced their way, but no words. His heart seemed bursting. but he would tell me nothing: The appearance of wretchedness grew upon him--the habits of irregularity increased. Ob! who can tell with what feverish agony! watching the tormenting slowness of the tout hand, and listening with all my soul, thrown to the mere sense of hearing. to every passing footstep. till the frightful stillness of deep and dreadful night seemed to shut me out from the human world. but he came not. No kindness no entreaties. no demand of maternal right could touch that changed and impenetrable heart; and yet the agony which it felt, would spread itself over that once delightful face--till at length it gathered that rigid and menacing emotion, when I ventured to touch upon my own wretchedness, which forced on me the horrible apprehension that there was something deeper than sorrow in the changed aspect of my boy, and that I had lived, or was doomed to live, to regard the keeper of my hopes, the source of my reasonable ambition, the stay and comfort of my widowed years. as a criminal!

I was driven by this new impulse to know where those hours were spent which once belonged to me, and who they were that robbed me of a treasure which could not enrich them but which had "made me poor indeed." By the agency of friends who took pity on me I traced him out. I was relieved to know that he was only on the way to crime of public notoriety and that he had not arrived at it. I heard of him among the riotous, and the vicious, among persons older than himself, who had seduced him away; he was described to me in the noisy mirth of some public houses of the city.

I fear honored Sir, that my poor boy is lost and at some places which I shudder to think of to me and the public I cannot now venture: to lift my eye to the widow's God, with other supplications, than that he will enable me bear this grief, as becomes one, who cannot doubt his grace and goodness.

At my humble mansion, where only there should be peace and humble gratitude.--My heart cries for my lost son ! But I have another son approaching to manhood. Am I to go through these sorrowing measures with my other son? public houses, and especially one that is in the name in the centre of the city, can be breaking the last shilling of widows to pay for vices errors are; but have you no control over licensing and follies ? Sir, I know not what your powers are; but have you no control over these places, and excluding from them such persons as my son was when he first entered in every bosom of society, which boasts of its Do such scenes allure men to distant lands to reclaim and instruct detainment? Are thousands and thousands so order, regularity, morality and its religious- heathen, while you tolerate in your own city establishments which show how worthless which are factories of misery, agony and worse instruction, all example may become, and than death, to the innocent and the meritorious Sir my bended knees implore protection; save to me my remaining boy:--let protection.--save me from renewed wretched- ness; and when my widowed and broken heart: son brother my daugh sentiment of gratitude for the blessing you have last pulse there bestowed on the grief-worn ELIZABETH