and have sometimes thought that he was providentially and mysteriously
offered to fill the void I have before alluded to. In that hope I have
written these pages.
SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF MASTER CHARLES SUMMERTON.
At exactly half past nine o'clock on the morning of Saturday, August
26, 1865, Master Charles Summerton, aged five years, disappeared
mysteriously from his paternal residence on Folsom Street, San
Francisco. At twenty-five minutes past nine he had been observed, by the
butcher, amusing himself by going through that popular youthful
exercise known as "turning the crab," a feat in which he was singularly
proficient. At a court of inquiry summarily held in the back parlor at
10.15, Bridget, cook, deposed to have detected him at twenty minutes
past nine, in the felonious abstraction of sugar from the pantry, which,
by the same token, had she known what was a-comin', she'd have never
previnted. Patsey, a shrill-voiced youth from a neighboring alley,
testified to have seen "Chowley" at half past nine, in front of the
butcher's shop round the corner, but as this young gentleman chose
to throw out the gratuitous belief that the missing child had been
converted into sausages by the butcher, his testimony was received with
some caution by the female portion of the court, and with downright
scorn and contumely by its masculine members. But whatever might have
been the hour of his departure, it was certain that from half past ten
A. M. until nine P. M., when he was brought home by a policeman, Charles
Summerton was missing. Being naturally of a reticent disposition, he has
since resisted, with but one exception, any attempt to wrest from him a
statement of his whereabouts during that period. That exception has been
myself. He has related to me the following in the strictest confidence.
His intention on leaving the door-steps of his dwelling was to proceed
without delay to Van Dieman's Land, by way of Second and Market streets.
This project was subsequently modified so far as to permit a visit
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