In my horror I
almost expected to hear the purling of a babe. My eyes in their perplexity
must have wandered from her face, for I suddenly became aware of a great
black head-line spread across the top of the paper that she had been
reading:
"FRIDAY, THE 13TH."
And beneath in one of the columns:
"TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN VIRGINIA"
"THE MOST PROMINENT CITIZEN OF THE STATE, EX-UNITED STATES SENATOR AND
EX-GOVERNOR, JUDGE LEE SANDS OF SANDS LANDING, WHILE TEMPORARILY INSANE
FROM THE LOSS OF HIS FORTUNE AND MILLIONS OF THE FUNDS FOR WHICH HE WAS
TRUSTEE, CUT THE THROAT OF HIS INVALID WIFE, HIS DAUGHTER'S, AND THEN
HIS OWN. ALL THREE DIED INSTANTLY."
In another column:
"ROBERT BROWNLEY CREATES THE MOST DISASTROUS PANIC IN THE HISTORY OF
WALL STREET AND SPREADS WRECK AND RUIN THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY."
A hideous picture seared its every light and shade on my mind, through my
heart, into all my soul. A frenzied-finance harvest scene with its gory
crop; in the centre one living-dead, part of the picture, yet the ghost
left to haunt the painters, one of whom was already cowering before the
black and bloody canvas.
Well did the word-artist who wrote over the door of the madhouse, "Man can
suffer only to the limit, then he shall know peace," understand the
wondrous wisdom of his God.
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