couple by the road, intending to make them go back
or kill the escort. After spending sleepless
nights over his ruling desire for a full year, he
at last attempted its execution—that is,
attempted to disfigure the young woman. It was
a success. It was permanent. In trying
to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper-table
with her parents and brothers and sisters) in such
a manner as to mar its comeliness, one of his bullets
wandered a little out of the course, and she dropped
dead. To the very last moment of his life he
bewailed the ill luck that made her move her face
just at the critical moment. And so he died,
apparently about half persuaded that somehow it was
chiefly her own fault that she got killed. This
idiot was hanged. The plea, of insanity was
not offered.
Insanity certainly is on the increase in the world,
and crime is dying out. There are no longer
any murders—none worth mentioning, at any
rate. Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible
that you were insane—but now, if you, having
friends and money, kill a mate, it is evidence that
you are a lunatic. In these days, too, if a person
of good family and high social standing steals anything,
they call it kleptomania, and send him to the lunatic
asylum. If a person of high standing squanders
his fortune in dissipation, and closes his career with
strychnine or a bullet, “Temporary Aberration”
is what was the trouble with him.
Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common?
Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects
to see it offered in every criminal case that comes
before the courts? And is it not so cheap, and
so common, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles
in derision when the newspaper mentions it?
And is it not curious to note how very often it wins
acquittal for the prisoner? Of late years it
does not seem possible for a man to so conduct himself,
before killing another man, as not to be manifestly
insane. If he talks about the stars, he is insane.
If he appears nervous and uneasy an hour before the
killing, he is insane. If he weeps over a great
grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that
he is “not right.” If, an hour after
the murder, he seems ill at ease, preoccupied, and
excited, he is, unquestionably insane.
Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime,
but a law against insanity. There is where the
true evil lies.
Night before last I had a singular dream. I
seemed to be sitting on a doorstep (in no particular
city perhaps) ruminating, and the time of night appeared
to be about twelve or one o’clock. The
weather was balmy and delicious. There was no
human sound in the air, not even a footstep.
There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead
stillness, except the occasional hollow barking of
a dog in the distance and the fainter answer of a
