From the Richmond Dispatch, 6/27/1867, p. 1, c. 6
ELOPEMENT. – On Monday night last Mrs. McNiven, the wife of Thomas McNiven, a baker of this city, being allured by the seductive wiles and fresh-paid greenbacks of a “boy in blue,” William Sutherland by name, left her house and sailed for parts unknown with her man of war. Mrs. McNiven is a young and attractive woman, and not relishing the prosy reality of an honest, hard-working husband, thought to herself,
“Oh, as I have a beau,
Who as a soldier did go,
Do you think I’ll say no?
No, not I!”
Our “boy in blue” had, in consequence, but to make his proposition, produce three hundred dollars in brand-new greenbacks, and the “ladye fayre” was “his’n,” after an acquaintance of twelve short months.
The wronged husband knows not whither his erring wife has fled, but hopes that wheresoever she may light she may meet with more happiness and prosperity than her faithlessness deserves.