The Satin Slippers
On 1st February, 1891, Michael Conley, a farmer living near Ionia, in
Chichasow county, Iowa, went to Dubuque, in Iowa, to be medically
treated. He left at home his son Pat and his daughter Elizabeth, a
girl of twenty-eight, a Catholic, in good health. On February 3
Michael was found dead in an outhouse near his inn. In his pocket
were nine dollars, seventy-five cents, but his clothes, including his
shirt, were thought so dirty and worthless that they were thrown away.
The body was then dressed in a white shirt, black clothes and satin
slippers of a new pattern. Pat Conley was telegraphed for, and
arrived at Dubuque on February 4, accompanied by Mr. George Brown, "an
intelligent and reliable farmer". Pat took the corpse home in a
coffin, and on his arrival Elizabeth fell into a swoon, which lasted
for several hours. Her own account of what followed on her recovery
may be given in her own words:--
"When they told me that father was dead I felt very sick and bad; I
did not know anything. Then father came to me. He had on a white
shirt" (his own was grey), "and black clothes and slippers. When I
came to, I told Pat I had seen father. I asked Pat if he had brought
back father's old clothes. He said 'No,' and asked me why I wanted
them. I told him father said he had sewed a roll of bills inside of
his grey shirt, in a pocket made of a piece of my old red dress. I
went to sleep, and father came to me again. When I awoke I told Pat
he must go and get the clothes"--her father's old clothes.
Pat now telephoned to Mr. Hoffman, Coroner of Dubuque, who found the
old clothes in the back yard of the local morgue. They were wrapped
up in a bundle. Receiving this news, Pat went to Dubuque on February
9, where Mr. Hoffman opened the bundle in Pat's presence. Inside the
old grey shirt was found a pocket of red stuff, sewn with a man's
long, uneven stitches, and in the pocket notes for thirty-five
dollars.
The girl did not see the body in the coffin, but asked about the _old_
clothes, because the figure of her father in her dream wore clothes
which she did not recognise as his. To dream in a faint is nothing
unusual. {50}
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