DEATH BY DROWNING.1434
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Sad Fate of a Little 6-Year-Old Boy,
an Inmate of Buckner's Home.

On the evening of the 14th instant, Joseph Chavedo, an inmate of Buckner Orphans' Home, met his death by accidental drowning in a tank within sight of the building and only about 200 yards in front of a neighbor's residence. Many of the children, including his two older brothers, had gone into the school rooms with their teachers for the afternoon session, others had gone about their various kinds of work and numerous little ones were playing about the lawns. The unfortunate boy and four others had asked for the privilege of going into the tank, but were forbidden. Taking a convenient opportunity, when all were variously engaged, they left unobserved. Soon, two came running back and two went to the near neighbor, all telling excitedly that "Joseph was drowned,." A youth on the public road near by was first to get the news and, hastening to the place, waded in, stooped and felt the body under the water and had but reached the bank when the farmer, Mr. McKnight, with some larger boys, arrived at the place. Then came Dr. Buckner and two of the matrons, also Mr. Beard and his wife, who lived hard by, and in a short time, almost incredibly, Dr. L. T. Bohannon. From the time the body was recovered, till all grounds of hope were gone, everything possible was done to restore the child. It would have melted the heart of any human to see the haste with which little orphan boys threw off their coats to make a pallet for their dead comrade, how tender the expressions of sympathy for the surviving brothers and younger sister. There lay the little 6-year-old so life-like and yet dead! It is supposed that the, in wading in, had struck his feet against the root of a willow growing in the water, and whose pendant branches and green foliage threw their shadow over the spot where the body was found. No hearse was available, but gently, in a wagon, on a bed made of orphan boys' coats and an extra blanket, and with an orphan boy for a driver, the corpse was conveyed to the hospital building, passing hundreds of girls and boys, who, with tender sympathy, were standing in groups. Among the larger ones are always volunteer watchers who care not for the stillness of the night as they wait by the side of a dead comrade. These same boys sat as watchers that night, and on yesterday, the day following the death, the schools adjourned, work was suspended, and teachers, matrons and hundreds of children went in procession to the orphans' cemetery, where appropriate services were held and the little boy was laid away to await the general resurrection.

The father of this child was drowned last year at Uvalde in a swollen stream, from which he was endeavoring to rescue others. He was caught in a drift and never seen again. The mother died in San Antonio last January and it was, by her request, it is said, repeated often on her deathbed that her children were sent to the Buckner home. They were received on March, 5, 1896, and Dr. Buckner says because of their neatness, intelligence and kindness, have already become general favorites.