Edwardsville Spectator

THE WIFE OF TWO HUSBANDS.

The sailing-master of a vessel belonging to a port on the east of Scotland, was, on a voyage to the Mediterranean, captured by the Algerines, and detained in slavery for eleven years: five of these employed at hard labor, with a ball of 11 lbs. weight fettered to his ancle, until happily released from so painful a situation, in consequence of the celebrated chastisement inflicted on these barbarians by Admiral Lord Exmouth. Returning to his native town, sufficiently disguised in tattered apparel, a toil-worn countenance, and an unshorn beard, he learnt that his wife, after passing ten years in supposed widowhood, (ship, cargo and crew, being conjectured to have perished in the sea) had married a second husband; and that a son, left apprentice to the book-binding business, now kept a selling and stationary shop, in which he was assisted by a daughter The liberated captive sought out and entered the shop, and on pretence of being recommended to a bed, invited himself home with them in the evening, and there found his Jean and her new husband, enjoying themselves around the domestic hearth.-After some circumlocution and preparing the way he inquired (naming his wife) if such a woman still lived in that place, and if she did, he had some intelligence of her husband to communicate. The question under the present circumstances of the family, rather alarmed than pleased, and caused the stranger to be looked on with suspicion, as meaning to impose on them. At length, assuming the tone and look of affection, he appealed to his Jean if she did not recognize him under all his concealment. The appeal was not made in vain; the recognition on both sides was tender and affecting. On being asked to which of the two husbands she chose to attach herself, the "wife of two husbands" emphatically exclaimed, that Willie (the first husband) had been the betrothed of her heart, her first love, and the parent of her children; and now that he was, as it were, restored to her from the dead, her choice was to be his for life and death, The second husband having had it put in his option, by the real gudeman, to appropriate what he could justly claim, acted extremely honorable, choosing nothing but a gold watch he himself had presented to the supposed widow when he wedded her, and on its being restored, left the house, town, and that district of the country, never since having either been seen or heard of. The prominent actor of this little interesting drama has now a vessel of his own, and is occasionally in the habit, in pursuance of his marine occupation, of visiting the port of Perth, and tells the tale of his romantic adventure as it really occurred, with an amusing pleasantry and original simplicity.