Directly after this visit, business arrangements called me away from home, and detained me in New York City without interruption until last May. During this period, of course, I had no means of learning any thing whatever concerning Gustav Stahlmann. On my return, the first glimpse I caught of the familiar lake recalled him to my memory, and revived the old interest. I determined to renew our former acquaintance, but found, to my great disappointment, that all visitors to the Crib had been prohibited by the authorities soon after I was called from home; yet I did not give up in my attempt to find out if he still remained in his situation. After many fruitless inquiries, I finally learned that he was dead. This was the only knowledge I could gain, and, disappointed by the sad intelligence, I dismissed the subject from my mind.
A week ago I made the startling discovery that the Crib at the eastern terminus of the lake tunnel, within the year following its completion, had been the scene of a tragedy, the particulars of which, when I learned them, thrilled me with horror, and called forth my profoundest sympathy for the poor victim. The whole circumstance had been so carefully kept secret by an enforced reticence on the part of the authorities, that beyond two or three individuals no one in Chicago had the slightest suspicion of the sickening drama which was enacted but two miles from her shores.
I was walking through the Court House looking at the arrangement of the newly erected portion of the building, and while in the rooms occupied by the Water Board, I accidentally stumbled upon an old memorandum book which had evidently been misplaced during the recent removal of this department from their old quarters on Wells Street to the first floor of the west wing. Upon examination it proved to be a kind of diary, and was written with pencil in the German character. On the inside of the front cover, near the upper right hand corner, was inscribed the name Gustav Stahlmann, and underneath a date—1865. A small portion of the book, the first part, was filled with accounts, some of them of expenditures, others memoranda of days’ work in different parts of the city, and under various foremen. But it was to the body of the book that my attention was particularly called. This was in the journal form, being a record of successive occurrences with the attending thoughts. The entries were made at irregular intervals and without any regard to system. Sometimes it had been written in daily for a considerable period, then dropped, and taken up again apparently at the whim of the owner. In places there appeared no connection between the parts separated by a break of even short duration; at others the sense was obscure, and could only be attained by implication. The earliest records in the second part were in June, 1867, and I found dates regularly inserted as late as the November following. In December they ceased entirely; afterward the diary, if such it might then be called, was either by the day or the week, or without any direct evidence as to the time when the circumstances therein narrated had occurred. In fact, throughout the whole of the concluding portion there was nothing to indicate that the matter had not been written on a single occasion, except the variations which almost every person’s hand-writing exhibits when produced under different degrees of nervous excitement.
From this black morocco memorandum book; from the hand-writing of Gustav Stahlmann himself, I learned the incidents of his career after I parted from him. They constitute the history of a fate so horrible in every respect, that I shudder at the thought that any human being was doomed to experience it.
The main facts in this narrative I have translated, sometimes literally, at others using my own language, where the thoughts in the original were so carelessly or obscurely expressed as to render any other course simply impossible.
It seems, as I supposed, that when Stahlmann was first settled in the Crib, he was greatly pleased with his situation. The weather was mild and beautiful; the fresh air blowing across the water was a grateful change from the close and dusty atmosphere of Chicago. Many of his old friends came out to take a look at his new quarters, and almost surveyed them with envy while listening to an account of his easy, untroubled life. At dusk, after he had lighted his lamp, and it threw out its rays, he would watch to see how suddenly in the distance, as if to keep it company, the great white beacon in the lighthouse would flash out, burning bright and clear. Then along the western shore the city lights, one by one, would kindle up, multiplying into a thousand twinkling stars that threw a halo against the sky. Afterwards the soughing of the waves as they washed up the sides of his abode, fell pleasantly on his ear, and lulled him to sleep with Caspar lying at his feet.
But it seemed as if the same day came again and again, for still the waters broke around him, and still night after night the same lights flashed and burned. Then the time appeared to become longer, and he watched more eagerly for the arrival of some visitors, but, if his watching had been in vain, he went wearily to sleep at night with a feeling of disappointment, only to waken and go through the same cheerless routine. Sometimes for a whole week he would not see a single human being nor hear the sound of a human voice, save his own when he spoke to the dog, who seemed by sagacious instinct to sympathize in his master’s lonesome position, and capered about until he would attract his attention, and be rewarded by an approving word and caress upon the head.
Visitors had become less and less frequent until the last of September, when they ceased altogether. Stahlmann in trying to explain this to himself correctly concluded that the authorities must have prohibited them, as he had heard some time previously they entertained such an intention, although he had been reluctant to believe it, and still vainly hoped that it might not be true. But time only confirmed the suspicion which he had been so unwilling to accept, and although within two miles of a crowded city, he found himself completely isolated, cut off, as it were, from the human race.
Then he searched for something that might amuse him and help wear away the interminable days, but he found nothing. He would have been glad even if only the old newspapers had been preserved that he might re-read them, but they were destroyed, and he owned no books. His former severe labor, performed in company with his fellow men, was now far preferable in his eyes to this complete solitude, with nothing to occupy his hands or mind. He saw the vessels pass until they seemed to become companions for him in his loneliness; he had watched them all the Summer, but the winds grew chill and rough, sweeping out of sullen clouds, and boisterously drove home the ships.
Stahlmann found himself utterly alone on the wide lake, and the fierce blasts howled around his frame house, covering it with spray from the lashing billows that seemed ready to engulf it. Crusts of ice formed and snapped, rattling down to the waves. Heavy snow fell, but did not whiten the unchanging scenery, for it was drowned in the waste of waters. Night after night he lit the beacon and looked yearningly westward to the starred city. Then the solitude grew intolerable. It was like the vision of heaven to the lost spirits shut out in darkness forever. He was alone, all alone, craving even for the sound of a kindred voice, so that he cried out in his anguish. The flickering lights he was watching threw their rays over thousands of human beings, yet there was not one to answer his despairing call.