University of Virginia Library

56. CHAPTER LVI.

MRS. HAWKINS slowly and conscientiously, as if every
detail of her family history was important, told the
story of the steamboat explosion, of the finding and adoption
of Laura. Silas, that is Mr. Hawkins, and she always loved
Laura as if she had been their own child.

She then narrated the circumstances of Laura's supposed
marriage, her abandonment and long illness, in a manner
that touched all hearts. Laura had been a different woman
since then.

Cross-examined. At the time of first finding Laura on the
steamboat, did she notice that Laura's mind was at all
deranged? She couldn't say that she did. After the recovery
of Laura from her long illness, did Mrs. Hawkins think
there were any signs of insanity about her? Witness confessed
that she did not think of it then.

Re-Direct examination. “But she was different after that?”

“O, yes, sir.”

Washington Hawkins corroborated his mother's testimony
as to Laura's connection with Col. Selby. He was at Harding

during the time of her living there with him. After
Col. Selby's desertion she was almost dead, never appeared
to know anything rightly for weeks. He added that he
never saw such a scoundrel as Selby. (Checked by District
attorney.) Had he noticed any change in Laura after her
illness? Oh, yes. Whenever any allusion was made that
might recall Selby to mind, she looked awful—as if she could
kill him.

“You mean,” said Mr. Braham, “that there was an unnatural,
insane gleam in her eyes?”

“Yes, certainly,” said Washington in confusion.

All this was objected to by the district attorney, but it was
got before the jury, and Mr. Braham did not care how much
it was ruled out after that.

Eschol Sellers was the next witness called. The Colonel
made his way to the stand with majestic, yet bland deliberation.
Having taken the oath and kissed the Bible with a
smack intended to show his great respect for that book, he
bowed to his Honor with dignity, to the jury with familiarity,
and then turned to the lawyers and stood in an attitude of
superior attention.

“Mr. Sellers, I believe? began Mr. Braham.

“Eschol Sellers, Missouri,” was the courteous acknowledgement
that the lawyer was correct.

“Mr. Sellers, you know the parties here, you are a friend
of the family?”

“Know them all, from infancy, sir. It was me, sir, that
induced Silas Hawkins, Judge Hawkins, to come to Missouri,
and make his fortune. It was by my advice and in company
with me, sir, that he went into the operation of—”

“Yes, yes. Mr. Sellers, did you know a Major Lackland?”

“Knew him well, sir, knew him and honored him, sir.
He was one of the most remarkable men of our country, sir.
A member of congress. He was often at my mansion sir, for
weeks. He used to say to me, `Col. Sellers, if you would
go into politics, if I had you for a colleague, we should show

Calhoun and Webster that the brain of the country didn't
lie east of the Alleganies'. But I said—”

“Yes, yes. I believe Major Lackland is not living,
Colonel?”

There was an almost imperceptible sense of pleasure betrayed
in the Colonel's face at this prompt acknowledgment of his
title.

“Bless you, no. Died years ago, a miserable death, sir, a
ruined man, a poor sot. He was suspected of selling his vote
in Congress, and probably he did; the disgrace killed him,
he was an outcast, sir, loathed by himself and by his constituents.
And I think, sir—”

The Judge. “You will confine yourself, Col. Sellers, to
the questions of the counsel.”

“Of course, your honor. This,” continued the Colonel in
confidential explanation, “was twenty years ago. I shouldn't
have thought of referring to such a trifling circumstance now.
If I remember rightly, sir”—

A bundle of letters was here handed to the witness.

“Do you recognize that hand-writing?”

“As if it was my own, sir. It's Major Lackland's. I was
knowing to these letters when Judge Hawkins received them.
[The Colonel's memory was a little at fault here. Mr.
Hawkins had never gone into details with him on this subject.]
He used to show them to me, and say, `Col, Sellers you've
a mind to untangle this sort of thing.' Lord, how everything
comes back to me. Laura was a little thing then. The Judge
and I were just laying our plans to buy the Pilot Knob,
and—”

“Colonel, one moment. Your Honor, we put these letters
in evidence.”

The letters were a portion of the correspondence of Major
Lackland with Silas Hawkins; parts of them were missing
and important letters were referred to that were not here.
They related, as the reader knows, to Laura's father. Lackland
had come upon the track of a man who was searching

for a lost child in a Mississippi steamboat explosion years
before. The man was lame in one leg, and appeared to be
flitting from place to place. It seemed that Major Lackland
got so close track of him that he was able to describe his personal
appearance and learn his name. But the letter containing
these particulars was lost. Once he heard of him at a
hotel in Washington; but the man departed, leaving an empty
trunk, the day before the major went there. There was
something very mysterious in all his movements.

Col. Sellers, continuing his testimony, said that he saw this
lost letter, but could not now recall the name. Search for
the supposed father had been continued by Luckland, Hawkins
and himself for several years, but Laura was not informed
of it till after the death of Hawkins, for fear of raising false
hopes in her mind.

Here the District Attorney arose and said,

“Your Honor, I must positively object to letting the witness
wander off into all these irrelevant details.”

Mr. Braham. “I submit, your Honor, that we cannot be
interrupted in this manner. We have suffered the state to
have full swing. Now here is a witness, who has known the
prisoner from infancy, and is competent to testify upon the
one point vital to her safety. Evidently he is a gentleman
of character, and his knowledge of the case cannot be shut
out without increasing the aspect of persecution which the
State's attitude towards the prisoner already has assumed.”

The wrangle continued, waxing hotter and hotter. The
Colonel seeing the attention of the counsel and Court
entirely withdrawn from him, thought he perceived here his
opportunity. Turning and beaming upon the jury, he began
simply to talk, but as the grandeur of his position grew upon
him—his talk broadened unconsciously into an oratorial vein.

“You see how she was situated, gentlemen; poor child, it
might have broken her heart to let her mind get to running
on such a thing as that. You see, from what we could make
out her father was lame in the left leg and had a deep scar on

his left forehead. And so ever since the day she found out
she had another father, she never could run across a lame
stranger without being taken all over with a shiver, and
almost fainting where she stood. And the next minute she
would go right after that man. Once she stumbled on a
stranger with a game leg, and she was the most grateful thing
in this world—but it was the wrong leg, and it was days and
days before she could leave her bed. Once she found a man
with a scar on his forehead, and she was just going to throw
herself into his arms, but he stepped out just then, and there
wasn't anything the matter with his legs. Time and time
again, gentlemen of the jury, has this poor suffering orphan
flung herself on her knees with all her heart's gratitude in
her eyes before some scarred and crippled veteran, but always,
always to be disappointed, always to be plunged into new
despair—if his legs were right his scar was wrong, if his scar
was right his legs were wrong. Never could find a man that
would fill the bill. Gentlemen of the jury, you have hearts,
you have feelings, you have warm human sympathies, you
can feel for this poor suffering child. Gentlemen of the jury,
if I had time, if I had the opportunity, if I might be permitted
to go on and tell you the thousands and thousands
and thousands of mutilated strangers this poor girl has started
out of cover, and hunted from city to city, from state to state,
from continent to continent, till she has run them down and
found they wan't the ones, I know your hearts—”

By this time the Colonel had become so warmed up, that
his voice, had reached a pitch above that of the contending
counsel; the lawyers suddenly stopped, and they and the
Judge turned towards the Colonel and remained for several
seconds too surprised at this novel exhibition to speak. In
this interval of silence, an appreciation of the situation gradually
stole over the audience, and an explosion of laughter
followed, in which even the Court and the bar could hardly
keep from joining.

Sheriff. “Order in the Court.”

The Judge. “The witness will confine his remarks to
answers to questions.”

The Colonel turned courteously to the Judge and said,

“Certainly, your Honor, certainly. I am not well acquainted
with the forms of procedure in the courts of New York,
but in the West, sir, in the West—”

The Judge. “There,there, that will do, that will do.!'

“You see, your Honor, there were no questions asked me,
and I thought I would take advantage of the lull in the proceedings
to explain to the jury a very significant train of—”

The Judge. “That will do, sir! Proceed Mr. Braham.”

“Col. Sellers, have you any reason to suppose that this
man is still living?”

“Every reason, sir, every reason.”

“State why.”

“I have never heard of his death, sir. It has never come
to my knowledge. In fact, sir, as I once said to Governor—”

“Will you state to the jury what has been the effect of the
knowledge of this wandering and evidently unsettled being,
supposed to be her father, upon the mind of Miss Hawkins
for so many years?”

Question objected to. Question ruled out.

Cross-examined. “Major Sellers, what is your occupation?”

The Colonel looked about him loftily, as if casting in his
mind what would be the proper occupation of a person of
such multifarious interests, and then said with dignity.

“A gentleman, sir. My father used to always say, sir”—

“Capt. Sellers, did you ever see this man, this supposed
father?”

“No, sir. But upon one occasion, old Senator Thompson
said to me, its my opinion, Colonel Sellers”—

“Did you ever see any body who had seen him?”

“No, sir. It was reported around at one time, that”—

“That is all.”

The defense then spent a day in the examination of medical
experts in insanity, who testified, on the evidence heard,
that sufficient causes had occurred to produce an insane mind
in the prisoner. Numerous cases were cited to sustain this

opinion. There was such a thing as momentary insanity, in
which the person, otherwise rational to all appearances, was
for the time actually bereft of reason, and not responsible
for his acts. The causes of this momentary possession
could often be found in the person's life. [It afterwards came
out that the chief expert for the defense, was paid a thousand
dollars for looking into the case.]

The prosecution consumed another day in the examination
of experts refuting the notion of insanity. These causes
might have produced insanity, but there was no evidence
that they have produced it in this case, or that the prisoner
was not at the time of the commission of the crime in full possession
of her ordinary faculties.

The trial had now lasted two weeks. It required four
days now for the lawyers to “sum up.” These arguments of
the counsel were very important to their friends, and greatly
enhanced their reputation at the bar; but they have small
interest to us. Mr. Braham in his closing speech surpassed
himself; his effort is still remembered as the greatest in the
criminal annals of New York.

Mr. Braham re-drew for the jury the picture of Laura's
early life; he dwelt long upon that painful episode of the
pretended marriage and the desertion. Col. Selby, he said,
belonged, gentlemen, to what is called the “upper classes.”
It is the privilege of the “upper classes” to prey upon the
sons and daughters of the people. The Hawkins family,
though allied to the best blood of the South, were at the
time in humble circumstances. He commented upon her
parentage. Perhaps her agonized father, in his intervals of
sanity, was still searching for his lost daughter. Would he
one day hear that she had died a felon's death? Society had
pursued her, fate had pursued her, and in a moment of delirium
she had turned and defied fate and society. He dwelt
upon the admission of base wrong in Col. Selby's dying statement.
He drew a vivid picture of the villain at last overtaken
by the vengeance of Heaven. Would the jury say that

this retributive justice, inflicted by an outraged, a deluded
woman, rendered irrational by the most cruel wrongs, was in
the nature of a foul, premeditated murder? “Gentlemen, it
is enough for me to look upon the life of this most beautiful
and accomplished of her sex, blasted by the heartless villainy
of man, without seeing, at the end of it, the horrible spectacle
of a gibbet. Gentlemen, we are all human, we have all
sinned, we all have need of mercy. But I do not ask mercy
of you who are the guardians of society and of the poor
waifs, its sometimes wronged victims; I ask only that justice
which you and I shall need in that last dreadful hour, when
death will be robbed of half its terrors if we can reflect that
we have never wronged a human being. Gentlemen, the life
of this lovely and once happy girl, this now stricken woman,
is in your hands.”

The jury were visibly affected. Half the court room was
in tears. If a vote of both spectators and jury could have
been taken then, the verdict would have been, “let her go,
she has suffered enough.”

But the district attorney had the closing argument. Calmly
and without malice or excitement he reviewed the testimony.
As the cold facts were unrolled, fear settled upon the listeners.
There was no escape from the murder or its premeditation.
Laura's character as a lobbyist in Washington, which
had been made to appear incidentally in the evidence, was
also against her. The whole body of the testimony of the
defense was shown to be irrelevant, introduced only to excite
sympathy, and not giving a color of probability to the absurd
supposition of insanity. The attorney then dwelt upon the
insecurity of life in the city, and the growing immunity with
which women committed murders. Mr. McFlinn made a
very able speech, convincing the reason without touching the
feelings.

The Judge in his charge reviewed the testimony with great
show of impartiality. He ended by saying that the verdict
must be acquital or murder in the first degree. If you find

that the prisoner committed a homicide, in possession of her
reason and with premeditation, your verdict will be accordingly.
If you find she was not in her right mind, that she
was the victim of insanity, hereditary or momentary, as it
has been explained, your verdict will take that into account.

As the Judge finished his charge, the spectators anxiously
watched the faces of the jury. It was not a remunerative
study. In the court room the general feeling was in favor
of Laura, but whether this feeling extended to the jury, their
stolid faces did not reveal. The public outside hoped for a
conviction, as it always does; it wanted an example; the
newspapers trusted the jury would have the courage to do
its duty. When Laura was convicted, then the public would
turn around and abuse the governor if he did not pardon her.

The jury went out. Mr. Braham preserved his serene
confidence, but Laura's friends were dispirited. Washington
and Col. Sellers had been obliged to go to Washington, and
they had departed under the unspoken fear that the verdict
would be unfavorable,—a disagreement was the best they
could hope for, and money was needed. The necessity of the
passage of the University bill was now imperative.

The Court waited for some time, but the jury gave no
signs of coming in. Mr. Braham said it was extraordinary.
The Court then took a recess for a couple of hours. Upon
again coming in, word was brought that the jury had not yet
agreed.

But the jury had a question. The point upon which they
wanted instruction was this:—They wanted to know if Col.
Sellers was related to the Hawkins family. The court then
adjourned till morning.

Mr. Braham, who was in something of a pet, remarked to
Mr. O'Toole that they must have been deceived—that juryman
with the broken nose could read!