The Daily Intelligencer

Love and Woe.

In East Tennessee, prior to the breaking out of the late civil war, there lived a young husband surrounded with all the pleasures of a happy family and the comforts of this life. At the first call to arms he bid adieu to his young wife and only child and went to battle.

In the winter of 1864, being broken down and unfit for the service, he received his discharge and, hastened home to greet his wife and child, whom he had not seen during his term of service.

His home pleasures, however, were of but short duration, for soon after his arrival he was arrested for disloyalty, and banished across the Ohio river. Arriving at Atlanta, he went to work industriously. But he was not permitted to cherish his anticipated pleasure long, for while toiling among newly made friends he received the sad intelligence that his wife and child had sickened and died. This was reliable, as he thought, and he became sad and despondent. No longer could he toil and labor for them, and with a dejected spirit he became a wanderer. After five years of wandering in the far West, amid the wild scenes of frontier life, he turned his steps back to the States, and on locating not far distant from Nashville he met a poor but lovely widow, with her only child, a daughter, scarcely ten years old. A new era seemed to dawn upon his future, and soon his acquaintance with this good woman ripened into love, and he resolved to take herself and child and be to them a husband and father.

Not very long ago an attorney of Nashville received a letter from a lady in East Tennessee, stating that she was informed that her husband, who had left her shortly after the close of the war, had died, leaving considerable property, and as she and her only child were poor and in needy circumstances, requested the attorney to examine into the estate, and inform her of its condition. The attorney learning the condition of things, communicated the facts, as he understood them, to the lady in East Tennessee, and she, believing that her husband had proven recreant to his marriage vows, concluded to file a bill for divorce and alimony. It was prepared and mailed to her at her home, and in due time it was returned to the attorney, sworn to, who filed it in court, and obtained an attachment, which was levied upon all the property claimed and owned by the husband.

When the writ was served upon him he was at his usual business, which he suddenly dropped as if struck by lightning.

"Great God! what is that you read, Mr. Sheriff?"

On coming to from his shock, he took the paper, and seeing that it was in the name of his long-neglected but not-forgotten wife, he rushed to the attorney's office for more information. On being told there was no mistake, the poor wretched man stood before him with great beads of perspiration dropping from his forehead, and exclaimed:

"Is there no remedy. Tell me, sir, what am I to do? Is there no escape from this disgrace? My poor wife-no, the woman I have loved for the last five years and called my wife, is now lying at the point of death with consumption, and her poor daughter, who from childhood had called me father, will forever curse and hate my name."

The dying woman was made aware of all the facts, and angel-like, just as she passed away, expressed the desire that her husband-for such she would call him until death-should go and live with Mrs. Rogers, and be to her and their two children a devoted husband and father, as he had been in the past.

Appropriately and quietly her remains were interred, while over the grave bent the form of a man whose every emotion no pen can describe. But the attorney's personal, unknown client possessed a generous and forgiving disposition. She had no desire to persecute his restless, uneasy spirit. She said, in writing to her attorney: "If I thought my husband would be kind and good to me in the future as he has been in the past, although I am comfortably situated in the house of my aged father, who bitterly opposes my leaving him, yet I, for the sake of the child I bore my husband, would leave the roof that now gives me shelter, and share his trials the balance of my life."

The wretched husband on calling at the attorney's office, was shown the letter of his wife, and after reading and devouring its contents, exclaimed, "God bless her. Noble woman, thou art the same archangel of mercy and goodness. She shall not only have my kindness and love, but I will toil and labor for her all my days." Seeing his willing ness to share his little fortune with her, the attorney drew a decree, which is intended as a matter of record, divesting all right, title and interest he had in and to his real estate and vesting it in his wife in fee absolute, and the cause in court continued is, we hope, to be dismissed. The beautiful daughter of the noble dead mother is now happily married, and the father is prepared to bring his first love and only child to their new home, where it is hoped they will spend their days in the enjoyment of peace and happiness.