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With eager anticipation on a late-September day in 1871, Reverend James Wishart went downtown and stopped by at the Liverpool shipping office in the old English seaport city of over 600,000 inhabitants, and then looked around over at a nearby railway station, likely the big main depot on Lime Street. The futile circumstances forced him to reluctantly return to his nearby home empty-handed. The next morning took him within two miles north of his house, down to the Strand wharf at the breakwater on the River Mersey and alongside the City of Paris moored at the pier. But somehow his extensive search was still frustratingly unfulfilled. When the large vessel loaded with cargo and passengers got underway and slowly pulled out of the spacious harbor to cruise up Crosby Channel, a 37-year-old Forfarshire woman named Jane and her seven young children were on board the steamship bound for New York City. The disappointed 49-year-old minister sadly left the Liverpool dockside without ever catching sight of those restless travelers. Faulty coordination had denied him the happy, however brief, reunion and heartening farewell that he had hoped for with the family of his younger brother David. |
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