LIONIZING MURDERERS
I had heard so much about the celebrated fortune-teller Madame-----, that I went to see her yesterday.She has a dark complexion naturally, and this effect is heightened by artificial aids which cost her nothing.
She wears curls--very black ones, and I had an impression that she gave their native attractiveness a lift with rancid butter.She wears a reddish check handkerchief, cast loosely around her neck, and it was plain that her other one is slow getting back from the wash.I presume she takes snuff.At any rate, something resembling it had lodged among the hairs sprouting from her upper lip.I know she likes garlic--I knew that as soon as she sighed.She looked at me searchingly for nearly a minute, with her black eyes, and then said:
"It is enough.Come!"
She started down a very dark and dismal corridor--I stepping close after her.Presently she stopped, and said that, as the way was so crooked and dark, perhaps she had better get a light.But it seemed ungallant to allow a woman to put herself to so much trouble for me, and so I said:
"It is not worth while, madam.If you will heave another sigh, I think Ican follow it."
So we got along all right.Arrived at her official and mysterious den, she asked me to tell her the date of my birth, the exact hour of that occurrence, and the color of my grandmother's hair.I answered as accurately as I could.Then she said:
"Young man, summon your fortitude--do not tremble.I am about to reveal the past.""Information concerning the future would be, in a general way, more--""Silence! You have had much trouble, some joy, some good fortune, some bad.Your great grandfather was hanged.""That is a l--"
"Silence! Hanged sir.But it was not his fault.He could not help it.""I am glad you do him justice."
"Ah--grieve, rather, that the jury did.He was hanged.His star crosses yours in the fourth division, fifth sphere.Consequently you will be hanged also.""In view of this cheerful--"
"I must have silence.Yours was not, in the beginning, a criminal nature, but circumstances changed it.At the age of nine you stole sugar.At the age of fifteen you stole money.At twenty you stole horses.At twenty-five you committed arson.At thirty, hardened in crime, you became an editor.You are now a public lecturer.Worse things are in store for you.You will be sent to Congress.Next, to the penitentiary.Finally, happiness will come again--all will be well--you will be hanged."I was now in tears.It seemed hard enough to go to Congress; but to be hanged--this was too sad, too dreadful.The woman seemed surprised at my grief.I told her the thoughts that were in my mind.Then she comforted me.
"Why, man," she said, "hold up your head--you have nothing to grieve about.Listen.
--[In this paragraph the fortune-teller details the exact history of the Pike-Brown assassination case in New Hampshire, from the succoring and saving of the stranger Pike by the Browns, to the subsequent hanging and coffining of that treacherous miscreant.She adds nothing, invents nothing, exaggerates nothing (see any New England paper for November, 1869).This Pike-Brown case is selected merely as a type, to illustrate a custom that prevails, not in New Hampshire alone, but in every state in the Union--I mean the sentimental custom of visiting, petting, glorifying, and snuffling over murderers like this Pike, from the day they enter the jail under sentence of death until they swing from the gallows.The following extract from the Temple Bar (1866) reveals the fact that this custom is not confined to the United States.--"on December 31, 1841, a man named John Johnes, a shoemaker, murdered his sweetheart, Mary Hallam, the daughter of a respectable laborer, at Mansfield, in the county of Nottingham.He was executed on March 23, 1842.He was a man of unsteady habits, and gave way to violent fits of passion.The girl declined his addresses, and he said if he did not have her no one else should.After he had inflicted the first wound, which was not immediately fatal, she begged for her life, but seeing him resolved, asked for time to pray.He said that he would pray for both, and completed the crime.The wounds were inflicted by a shoemaker's knife, and her throat was cut barbarously.After this he dropped on his knees some time, and prayed God to have mercy on two unfortunate lovers.