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Show THE ASSASSIN. The Trand of the assassin has more than once changed the history of the world. When Charlotte Corday came from the rural districts in T ranee to the great and gay capital, md in a bath tub stabbed the monster, Marat, it was to avenge the wrongs of a people. peo-ple. The idea had grown in her mind as she read of the monstrous actions of Marat, and this idea, like the serpent's ser-pent's egg, "when hatched grew mischievous," mis-chievous," and it was her waking dream by day and disturbed her peaceful peace-ful slumbers in the stilly night John Wilkes Booth, who shot the martyr, i Lincoln, did it because he thought he j was avenging the people of the south. The cruel war had brought its wrongs,' and he laid them up against the head of the nation. The death of Lincoln meant the avenging of them to him, and the idea once conceived grew in his mind until it mastered him, and he acted as he always did, upon impulse. The same with Guiteau, who assassinated assassi-nated Garfield; he was a man with a disordered mind. He brooded over his wrongs until he lived alone for vengeance, ven-geance, and he mercilessly struck down the chief executive of a great ration j and gloated over his deed. President Carnot of France was assassinated by the same kind of individual as Guiteau: i a man with nosne of the genius of Booth nor the daring or brilliancy of Charlotte Corday, but one who longed to write his name upon a page of his"-tory, his"-tory, and though the deed be as foul as man can commit, he never faltered when the idea became fixed in his mind. The assassin of history has been a gloomy figure with a disordered brain revengeful and melancholy, he has brooded over his wrongs- and wiped them out with blood; his heart ceased to feel the kindly emotions of nature and the love of God gave place to the fire of hate. When he looked upon the heavens at night and saw reflected there the glory of a divine God, the feeling that should have stirred his heart. was gone, and in its place the cruel nature of the savage. There, in the sile-nce, when his devotional nature should have been stirred, with uplifted hand he renewed his vow of assassination. assassina-tion. He could forget home and friends and kindred and uJlow all kindly thought to be swallowed up in the lust for the blood of his victim, j . Assassination is a terrible thing. It J may steal upon a man when he feels at i peace with all the world, and while his ; heart is beating in sympathy with the ; hopes of mankind. A man may leave his home strong in the hope and love of life, and be brought back a bleeding corpse the victim of hate, and while! his loved ones are weeping over his dead face the assassin gloats in his cell, and his diseased mind tells hint that he has performed a noble deed. : Men holding conspicuous positions in life are subject to the bullet and the knife of the assassin, and so Ions as insanity attacks the brain of man, breaking down his moral structure and making him worse than the' beasts of the forest, so long will the assassin stalk abroad. The assassin fills one with terror. His deed should be promptly punished, because be-cause to give him liberty endangers the lives of many, and one act of this kind breeds others, for there are alwavs imitators of bad as well as good deeds. God grant that such deeds may grow fewer, and that the time may come when reason may hold sway and his spirit animate all mankind. |