Belmont Chronicle

A Terrible Affliction.

[From the Alton Courier, 29th]

On the fork of Wood river, there has lived for ten years past an honest German, named Henry Webber, a happy husband and father of six children. Last week, on going home to dinner, he was surprised to find his team hitched to his wagon, the household furniture loaded in the wagon, in which was also the wife and six children, all ready to start. On inquiring what all this meant, his hired man, also a German, gave Webber to understand that it was none of his business, and presenting a six-shooter at Webber, jumped into the wagon and deliberately drove off, since which Webber has had no tidings of wife, children, horses, wagon, or household furniture.

Webber had not the slightest reason to believe his wife unfaithful, or that she was in any degree dissatisfied. He married her after a strictly business fashion some twelve years ago, while acting as a flour packer for Wise & Lee, he thought he ought to get married. Too much occupied in business to court a wife, he wrote to a female friend in St. Louis, whom he had known in Germany, to select a wife for him. In a few days his St. Louis friend replied to him, stating that she had made a selection, and requested him to come down on a given day and marry the woman selected.— On the day appointed he went to St. Louis, saw the woman, married her; and returned with her to this city the same evening, and ever since has lived happily with her.—

Her departure was as business like as her marriage.