Richmond Daily Times

SHOCKING AFFAIR OF SCANDAL.

The New York correspondent of the Woodstock "Tenth Legion," thus describes an affair of which we have observed no other account:

An intense excitement is at present raging in "upper-ten-dom" from an awfully tragical circumstance which has recently taken place in the Fifth Avenue. It appears that about two years and a half ago, a gentleman who was at that time one of our first merchant monarchs, was compelled by an unpleasant business transaction between some of his foreign connexions and himself, to temporarily relinquish the society of a young and lovely wife, and to proceed on a voyage from this city to St. Petersburg. This matrimonial separation was rendered the more poignant, by the fact the parties had only been united about six months, and were most ardently attached to each other. The merchant, however, set out.

In the course of the voyage, the vessel touched at London, where the merchant met a dashing aristocratic friend, who had just completed a pleasure tour over Europe, and was about returning to the metropolis of the Western World. The merchant communicated to his friend the object and probable duration of his visit to St. Petersburg, and requested his homeward-bound countryman to become the bearer of a letter to his wife. As this lady was one of the handsomest and most accomplished women in New York, the friend of course, joyfully undertook the embassy to the court of beauty.

The merchant continued his voyage, and, on arriving at St. Petersburg, he found that his affairs in that city were so complicated as to require his presence in the Russian capital for a much longer time than he had anticipated. Meanwhile, his aristocratic friend arrived in Gotham, presented the letter, and effected a much closer introduction to the merchant's wife than her absent husband had originally intended.

Well, one day last week, after an absence of two years and five months, the merchant landed at this port: but imagine his astonishment, when, upon unexpectedly presenting himself at his old residence in the Fifth Avenue, he discovered, to his unutterable horror, that a diminutive stranger, of some six weeks old, had recently become a member of his household. From several striking points of resemblance between the child, his wife, and his aristocratic friend, the unfortunate husband experienced no difficulty in arriving at a very unsatisfactory conclusion respecting the affiliation of the little intruder.

Frantic with rage, the merchant immediately commenced the task of retribution; and having learned the whereabouts of his wife's seducer, he rushed into his presence and shot him down like a dog. The maniac husband then escaped, reached his own home, dismissed the servants, stabbed his wife to the heart, threw the new-born babe out of the back window, and finally hung himself from a beam in the ceiling of his own bed-room, where he was found a few hours afterwards, perfectly dead.

Such an extraordinary instance of wholesale murder is unparalleled in the annals of New York crime; and the excitement produced among all classes of society is proportionately great; but in compliance with the earnest request of the friends of the deceased, the reporters of the city press, at present, withhold the names of all parties connected with the above dreadful occurrence.