Knoxville Weekly Chronicle

THE SEARCH FOR CHARLIE ROSS.

Hopeful Words from Philadelphia—The Child Still Alive—Prospects of Ultimate Success, etc.

The Philadelphia Ledger, of yesterday, in an editorial article on the abduction of little Charlie Ross, which inspires a great deal of hope in the ultimately successful issue of the search for him, says that while the secret of his whereabouts is still a mystery, those engaged in seeking him are undismayed by disappointments, and still continue the search. The Ledger says:

"The police authorities of the cities of Philadelphia and New York do not share the general and quite natural fear that the child is no longer alive. They have never had any reason to suspect his death, but on the contrary, one of the very few satisfactory results of the searching inquiries made by the Philadelphia party who spent four nights and days at the work last week in New York, was to make it clear that the child was living a few hours before the two brigands were killed. This does not refer to what Douglass last said while he was gasping in the throes of death, but to other convincing information independent of that and as conclusive as any circumstantial evidence, or anything short of actual visible proof, can be. Either the child was living on Saturday, December 12, or else the brigands did not know anything to the contrary at that time. If we were at liberty to place the testimony which warrants this belief, before the public, it would be found to be a full justification for the foregoing statement, but the particulars can not be published without the risk of defeating the chance that further valuable information may be obtained from the same source. The readers of the Ledger, of course, understand that we are not in the habit of indulging in editorial statements without sufficient voucher for all that is said, whether the statement be made upon positive knowledge, or upon convincing reasons for belief; so we repeat that there has never been any reason to believe that Charlie Ross is not living, and that there are, on the contrary, convincing reasons for the belief that he was living on Saturday night, December 12, and there is no evidence that any harm has come to him since that time."