OCR Text |
Show si:u: :ti:i. T II K DOOM K I) 1VO.lI A N A jury of the men of Sun Vraneisco have found a woman only a woman v'nihy of imirdor in the lir.st degree. A thousand men in California, now breathing breath-ing the puro air of Heaven, have each killed "bis man!" from a judgo ol the Supremo Court to a bar room tough, all have reveled iu human blood to i-aliety, and all have ccapcd with heads on their sdioulders, without attaint at-taint of name or esta'e. But hero a poor, wretched, friendless woman a woman whom nono of her sex have treated kindly for many years a woman wo-man with health ruined by dissipation, (which was the only reeieation a proud, cynical soulless "society" allowed her) in a lit ol ungovernable ang-.T, inspited by jealousy, kills the learned, "universally "univer-sally respected man" whoso act- were identical with hers, whoso excuse for those acts were, to hers, as a grain of sand to a mountain of granite. Site kills this man when he places his heel upon her when he ciushes her to the earth by his ineffable (!) social elevation eleva-tion and straightway wo seize upon and drag her to the tribunal, and pour upon her torrents of sarcasm, of contumely, of vituperation, of lofty hypocritical formulas about morality, ubiut the danger to "Society," through tins helpless one this llagar of all ages one who, like all her class, has already been driven into the desert, with naught but a crust of bread and a cruet of water, and the serge vestments vest-ments of humiliation driven thus, too, by the Sarahs and their sniviling weak kneed Abrahams this poorcrea-tute, poorcrea-tute, whom no family roof will cover in all this Christian world, must be punished pun-ished as men committing the same crimes are rarely punished. Out upon such cowardice I Is "society" afraid of this woman? lias "society" all at once become virtuous, and shocked at murdei? Must the first sacrifice to Justice, so long defrauded of her dues, be a woman? It is idle to say the act was without provocation the provocation was as treat as the yearning of woman's heart lor fidelity iu ali'cction, which is deep aud insatiable. Crittenden did deceive her again and again again aud again he evaded his promises with omnious reasons. It is folly to say she had no right to expect ex-pect their fulfillment. She was taught by that clear-headed, learned man tlm -he might expect the fulfillment of all his promises. He raised her to his lofty contemplation of the possible in all things, and of the supremacy of the mind over all codes, and all cu-toms, aud all restraint, and thus he left her to herself. No wonder that, accustomed to the splendor of her ideal elevation, when he saw herself again spumed to the dut, she turned upon the exponent of social morality, and not insanity, but from her stand-point, in a paroxysm ol righteous, avenging fury retaliated in the only way retaliation i'j possible to a woman. Af er all, if Crittenden were as infatuated in-fatuated as he ever declared himself to be, she did him a kindness to release him from the load of hope against hope he bore in bis bosom, from the death of affee'ion he once entertained for another, but now was obliged to carry through his declining years chained to him, a weary, weary load of exacttug affection, from one for whom all love had died out of his heart Blessed relief ! If 6uch were his real feelings, could he have opened his eyes on the world he was about to leave, he would have thanted her for the fatal shot. Rut if Ids expressions were untrue un-true and wanton, then the woman did oot do so vile a wrong from an abstract Doint of contemplation. She surely had no other redress. True, this redress re-dress was without avail to her; it brought nothing to her but the misty shadow of the callows, or the ominous gloom of a felon-cell; it cut off from tier any trace of lingering hope, and left her utterly desolate aud more out-east out-east than ever before. Women, at beit, have sufferings of which men never dream. Their endless end-less days of hopeless, aimless life their nights of deserted loneliness their exclusion from all the champagne of life, and condemnation to the mere lager-beer of existence their exclusion ex-clusion from society unless the jcgis of a man (no m itter what manner of man so that appearances are fair) her exclusion ex-clusion even from hotels and "Rooms to Let" unless she brines a man with her; her nameless diseases connected with her dostiued maternity of the human hu-man race everything conspires to make and keep her the slave of man and society over which she has scarcely any control. llave pity even on the worst of women wo-men more pity than ye would have on the worst of men ! If this woman is hung in San Francisco, Fran-cisco, the winds will blow sadder from the sea and the sun will touch less biight!y the eastern hills not for the death of a woman, for "blessed are the dead," but because we shall have lapsed from our courage, from our forgiving for-giving greatness, from the proud majesty maj-esty of our accustomed mercy because in her we shall have k,illed one type of love which, after all, is the only good there is in the human heart. Hang this woman, and the very name of San Eraneisco will be odious lor ages to come ! Guldan Ci'y. |