In every large city there are thousands of men, women, and children whose past history and whose present means of living are unknown to those with whom they come most closely in contact. It is only when some crime, at once frightful and mysterious, has been committed, and the newspaper reporters tell us of the inability of the police to identify the victim, or to find an adequate motive for the crime, that we fully appreciate the conditions of our modern city life. In American cities especially, where police surveillance is slight, and where an asylum is afforded to immigrants of all nations and all classes, and no questions are asked, the possibilities of passing unrecognized are much better than in any European city, except, perhaps, London. That city, says Mr. John Timbs (who has a pretty intimate knowledge of it), is the only place in all Europe where a man can find a secure retreat, or remain, if he pleases, many years unknown. If he pays regularly for his lodgings and for what he has to eat and drink, nobody will inquire whence he comes or whither he goes.

A curious case illustrative of this is related in Dr. King's anecdotes of his own times, an entertaining book printed some sixty years ago.

In the beginning of the previous century (about 1706), a man who possessed a good income, and was to all appearances happily married, told his wife, one morning, that he was obliged to go to the Tower to transact some business. Later in the day she received a note from him stating that he was under the necessity of going to Holland, and should probably be absent about three weeks. Seventeen years passed before he was either seen or heard from by any one who knew him; and during the whole of that time he was living in disguise only a few rods distant from his home. His wife was obliged to obtain an act of Parliament giving her authority to settle the estate; and the proceedings consequent thereon were watched by him with much interest. His two children dying not long after his mysterious disappearance, his wife moved to another and less expensive house than the one in which she had been left. He then made the acquaintance of her next-door neighbor, and while dining there, as he managed to do once or twice a week, he could look into the room where his wife sat and received company. He was supposed to be a bachelor; and as he showed some interest in the deserted lady he was seriously advised by his new acquaintances to marry her.

One evening, seventeen years after he went to transact a little business at the Tower, his wife was sitting at supper with some friends, when she received a note, in which the writer, who did not give his name, requested the favor of an interview with her, and for that purpose asked her to meet him the following evening, on a certain walk in the neighboring park. She laughingly showed it to the company, with the remark that old as she was it appeared she had got a gallant. One of the persons present, who had known her husband well, declared, on looking at the writing, that the note was from him. On recovering from the swoon into which this statement threw her, it was arranged that the ladies and gentlemen present should attend her to the place of meeting. At the time named in the note the wife went to the rendez-vous in company with her friends. In a few minutes the husband came up quietly, embraced his wife, saluted his friends, and went home, where, as the story goes, the husband and wife lived together in great harmony from that time unfit death parted them. The man never confessed, even to his most intimate friends, the cause of his singular conduct. There was no discoverable cause. He led a perfectly correct life while in hiding, and was obliged to stint himself in his daily expenses, as be had only a small sum of money when he disappeared, and he received nothing from the estate while absent. Probably it was the freak of an unsound mind,—an unsoundness which might never have betrayed itself so as to attract attention in any other action of his life.