with the jail, and, as a last tribute of affection,
respect, and appreciation of your many sterling qualities,
they will walk two and two around your bier, and strew
wreaths of flowers on it. And lo! you are canonized.
Think of it, son-ingrate, assassin, robber of the dead,
drunken brawler among thieves and harlots in the slums
of Boston one month, and the pet of the pure and innocent
daughters of the land the next! A bloody and
hateful devil—a bewept, bewailed, and sainted
martyr—all in a month! Fool!—so
noble a fortune, and yet you sit here grieving!”
“No, madam,” I said, “you do me
wrong, you do, indeed. I am perfectly satisfied.
I did not know before that my great-grandfather was
hanged, but it is of no consequence. He has
probably ceased to bother about it by this time—and
I have not commenced yet. I confess, madam, that
I do something in the way of editing and lecturing,
but the other crimes you mention have escaped my memory.
Yet I must have committed them—you would
not deceive a stranger. But let the past be as
it was, and let the future be as it may—these
are nothing. I have only cared for one thing.
I have always felt that I should be hanged some day,
and somehow the thought has annoyed me considerably;
but if you can only assure me that I shall be hanged
in New Hampshire—”
“Not a shadow of a doubt!”
“Bless you, my benefactress!—excuse
this embrace—you have removed a great load
from my breast. To be hanged in New Hampshire
is happiness —it leaves an honored name
behind a man, and introduces him at once into the
best New Hampshire society in the other world.”
I then took leave of the fortune-teller. But,
seriously, is it well to glorify a murderous villain
on the scaffold, as Pike was glorified in New Hampshire?
Is it well to turn the penalty for a bloody crime
into a reward? Is it just to do it? Is,
it safe?
LEGISLATION NEEDED
This country, during the last thirty or forty years,
has produced some of the most remarkable cases of
insanity of which there is any mention in history.
For instance, there was the Baldwin case, in Ohio,
twenty-two years ago. Baldwin, from his boyhood
up, had been of a vindictive, malignant, quarrelsome
nature. He put a boy’s eye out once, and
never was heard upon any occasion to utter a regret
for it. He did many such things. But at
last he did something that was serious. He called
at a house just after dark one evening, knocked, and
when the occupant came to the door, shot him dead,
and then tried to escape, but was captured. Two
days before, he had wantonly insulted a helpless cripple,
and the man he afterward took swift vengeance upon
with an assassin bullet had knocked him down.
Such was the Baldwin case. The trial was long
and exciting; the community was fearfully wrought
up. Men said this spiteful, bad-hearted villain
