Denver, Colo. —Victor Hugo’s story of Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables” is duplicated in many of the circumstances surrounding an eighteen-year-old Colorado boy who three years ago ran away from the industrial school at Golden, worked himself into a good position and then, a year after he had been married to a Des Moines, lowa, girl, found his past rising behind him, relentless as Hugo's Inspector Javert.
Six years ago Rosie E. Sheldon’s father died at Glenwood Springs. A year later the boy was sent to the industrial school for boys at Golden as incorrigible. The intervening year the mother had lost all control over him and it was at her request that he was taken in charge by the state.
The state made a poor job of reforming Sheldon. Its method of curing high spirits did not succeed, and Sheldon ran away. The first few times he ran away he was caught and brought back. Early in 1910 he managed to slip away and stay lost. The officers looked for him a few weeks and then gave up the search, although they did not forget.
Sheldon went to Des Moines, lowa and there started out to do what the big state of Colorado had not been able to do. He started out to reform himself. He got a job in the big Cownie glove factory at $10 a week, commenced to save his money and to go to night school. Before long his salary was raised, and then pretty soon it was raised again, and he was given a responsible position.
A little more than a year ago he met and fell in love with the daughter of a Des Moines business man. The two were married and started housekeeping. Sheldon was so happy that he wrote to his mother in Denver to tell her about his wife and the baby had just come. He told her the new name he had taken when he ran away from the reform school.
The mother told some of her friends, Sheldon’s younger brother, now in the school, heard where his brother was, and through some of these sources Superintendent Fred L. Paddleford of the industrial school board heard where his runaway had gone.
It was not long thereafter that Chief of Detectives Johnson of Des Moines arrested Sheldon and took him to jail. Sheldon told the story to the detective and begged to be released. Dispatches that carried the story did not state whether the detective had ever heard of Jean Valjean and the good bishop, but it is in the role of the bishop that Detective Johnson figures from now on.
He promised the boy that although he couldn’t let him go he would take an appeal direct to the governor of Colorado and ask him to grant a pardon to the runaway boy who had made good.
Governor Shaforth said that he would act in the case as soon as it was officially called to his attention and would take whatever action the facts might warrant. Superintendent Fred L. Paddleford of the school declared that the boy must be returned to the school “for the sake of discipline.”
“The fact that Sheldon is married and apparently doing all right now can’t be taken as any excuse," the superintendent said. “The only way we have to preserve order here and to prevent the boys running away whenever they get tired of staying is to make severe example of them when they are caught.
“If Sheldon were made an exception the chances are that all the boys would plan to run away and get married.”
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