 | Mark Twain's sketches, new and old |  |
LIONISING 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,
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 I
can 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.
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,”[1]
she said, “hold up your head—you have nothing to grieve
about. Listen. You will live in New Hampshire. In your sharp need and
distress the Brown family will succor you—such of them as Pike the assassin
left alive. They will be benefactors to you. When you shall have grown fat
upon their bounty, and are grateful and happy, you will desire to make some
modest return for these things, and so you will go to the house some night and
brain the whole family with an axe. You will rob the dead bodies of your
benefactors, and disburse your gains in riotous living among the rowdies and
courtesans of Boston. Then you will be arrested, tried, condemned to be
hanged, thrown into prison. Now is your happy day. You will be converted
—you will be converted just as soon as every effort to compass pardon, commutation,
or reprieve has failed—and then! Why, then, every morning and every
cell and sing hymns. This will show that assassination is respectable. Then
you will write a touching letter, in which you will forgive all those recent
Browns. This will excite the public admiration. No public can withstand
magnanimity. Next, they will take you to the scaffold, with great éclat, at the
head of an imposing procession composed of clergymen, officials, citizens generally,
and young ladies walking pensively two and two, and bearing bouquets
and immortelles. You will mount the scaffold, and while the great concourse
stand uncovered in your presence, you will read your sappy little speech which
the minister has written for you. And then, in the midst of a grand and impressive
silence, they will swing you into per— Paradise, my son. There will not
be a dry eye on the ground. You will be a hero! Not a rough there but will
envy you. Not a rough there but will resolve to emulate you. And next, a
great procession will follow you to the tomb—will weep over your remains—
connected 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, madame,” 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, madame, 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?
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 31st, 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 23d, 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. He made no attempt to escape, and
confessed the crime. After his imprisonment he behaved in the most decorous manner; he won upon
the good opinion of the jail chaplain, and he was visited by the Bishop of Lincoln. It does not appear
that he expressed any contrition for the crime, but seemed to pass away with triumphant certainty
that he was going to rejoin his victim in heaven. He was visited by some pious and benevolent ladies
of Nottingham, some of whom declared he was a child of God, if ever there was one. One of the ladies
sent him a white camelia to wear at his execution.”
| Mark Twain's sketches, new and old | |