Emanuel Brooks finds wife remarried

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HE IS ENOCH ARDEN

COLORED MAN HAS VARIED CA-
REER AS FICTION HERO.

The Result of an Election Bet Brooks
Parted From His Wife Years
Ago--Finds Her Re-
married Here.

His name is Brooks, and he is a
colored Enoch Arden , for he left his
wife many years ago and wandered
west to seek his fortune, to return to
her finally, finding her in the arms
of another man. The unfortunate re-
union happened two months ago. This
is the story:
In the year 1885, when Grover
Cleveland was first innaugurated
president of the United States, Ema-
nuel Brooks was living happily in a
little cottage of his own, amid ver-
dant farm lands that had passed to
him from the will of a kind hearted
master at the latter's death near the
close of the Civil war: blessed with
a loving wife, three children and all
the embellishments of a happy home
and every promise of a long life re-
plete with the peculiar joys of com-
plete domestic felicity. Moreover, he
lived only two miles from Rock Dan-
iel, Tennessee, a village filled with
people of his own color and noted for
social functions among the negro
elite of the whole country.
So our modern Enoch Arden flour-
iced until the downfall.

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Then came the election. Brooks
was no sport; but the opportunities
were rare ones that year. Like ev-
ery darkey son of the south, his ten-
dencies were distinctly toward Re-
publicans: so when a white man
of the neighborhood offered to bet a
sung sum of the alluring metal
against all that Brooks possessed that
the election of 1884 would swing to
Cleveland, the wager was accepted.
It looked like easy money to the fool-
ish negro. The entire nation would
surely recognize the inherent worth
of the grand old party that had struck-
en the sheckles from four million suf-
fering slaves. People were too in-
telligent to do otherwise in the face
of apparent facts. In addition to the
bet, Brooks made the statement: "If
this election goes wrong, I'll leave
home and try to forget I ever had
one here."
With every feeling of security,
Brooks went to the polls and voted
a straight ticket. Then he sat down
and waited for the returns to come
in.
They came. Not until Missouri
turned turtle on the solid south in
favor of Roosevelt for a second term,
has a southern state broken her al-
allegiance to the Democratic mule as
the symbol of political purity, and
at that time financial conditions
were such that even the north was
won to a platform promising relief
from the stress, as a sick child will
sometimes cry for a very bitter pill.
By two o'clock that September morn-
ing Brooks had sold his farm and
paid his debt. At three, a train was
taking him west.
"It is all over with me," he said,
as the village station with its morn-
ing loungers grew dim in the gloom
behind the receding coach.

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In the years that followed Emme-
nuel Brooks' departure, Mrs. Brooks
became tired of waiting. She had
had a hard time of it. Many things
pointed to her husband's faithless-
ness. Local gossips hinted contin-
ually that there was a woman in the
case. She had not accepted their
version at first, but as time rolled on,
her conditions became such that she
was willing to listen to any reasoning
that pointed to a temporary salvation.
As a last resource she consulted a
lawyer. This man, on receipt of a
fee, removed the obstacle, telling her
that under the laws of Tennessee a
marriage was null and void after one
party had absented himself seven
years, without reporting whether he
was alive or had joined the shades.
He, too, was colored, and as the al-
leged widow had acquired some small
pittance by dint of hard work, it was
he who offered to her, and so
the ceremony that made Emmanuel
Brooks the Enoch Arden of this tale,
was performed.
About three months ago Mrs. Jakes,
for that as the name she acqired
by the new union, came to Kansas
City, Kansas. Here she learned by
the records of the probate judge that
Brooks was still alive but slightly in-
sane. She lived in Kansas City, Kan-
sas, about three weeks, when one ev-
ening Brooks walked in.
Yesterday Mrs. Jakes cam to
County Attorney Taggari to assure
herself on the legality of her marriage
with Jakes under the laws of Kan-

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sas. She loves her new spouse the
best, she says.
But unlike the Mrs. Enoch Arden
of the story, Mrs. Jakes has had her
former husband safely put away in
an insane asylum. Thus a practical
mind may improve on flimsy fabrics
of the imagination. And thus, also,
is truth stranger than fiction.