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Show IMMATURE JUDGMENTS AND UNWISE PUBLICATIONS Much has been written or spoken on the now widely known Thaw murder case. Preachers have preached about it for whom the Sermon on the Mount were a dry and barren subject, and whose pulpits must dubiously glow with the more vivid hue of present day sensational topics. Emotional writers, if not with female hand, with at least feminine fem-inine sensibilities have essayed, to scoop bubbling fountains of human sympathy from the public heart by the aid of little golden trinkets saved from the wrecked reputation of a sweet chorus girl. Fiery denunciations have on one hand, chased after the scarcely departed spirit of an already-judged man of (the-world. On the other hand unsatisfactory unsatisfac-tory attempts have been made to shield the suspicious sus-picious jlooking conduct of a very worldly man, dead even at the expense of the now suffering living. liv-ing. Xt.wspitpers and magazines have inveigled the incautious but verbially prolific writer, suffering chronically from an "exaggerated ego," into public, expressions of opinion on an unsounded matter; inlo wise dissertations, on an unexplored subject for the guidance of unborn generations; into learned conjecture-! on a probably effective line of legal defense, on a case knotty even for a judicial mind. And all this has been built and elaborated in a great measure on mere rumor, on haphazard news gossip, on wildly snatched mid voraciously gobbled presumed facts. All this has been constructed, con-structed, with marvelous facility, by untrained lay minds while the learned members of the legal profession pro-fession are delving laboriously through an intricacy intri-cacy of faVts; while the police department of a great city is groping in the very sub-cellar of a great ease for hidden wires of evidence; while eminent emi-nent attorneys are laboring assiduously to draw from the frank judgment of blind, impartial justice some justification or at least some palliating circumstance cir-cumstance for a presumably criminal act. It had been better for all concerned, and more to the credit of the nation's common sense, if opinions opin-ions and judgments and disquisitions and dissertations disserta-tions had been wisely withheld, until presumed facts bad been sifted, and the legal aspect of the case, clarified through their duly appointed channels, the learned court of law. It is all a fresh confirmation confir-mation of the truth of the wise old saw. "Cobbler stick to thy last."' After this garrulous jumble of undigested theories on the majesty of the unwritten unwrit-ten law of whose field few have a clear conception and some no conception at all; after wholesale excoriations ex-coriations due to the lamentable state of the inar- I tistic conscience of Xew York artists, knowledge, of whose conduct is founded on mere hearsay, what practical conclusion can any one at present draw? After two weeks' trial occupied by direct testimony testi-mony and intricate cross-examinations, we dare not, we the self impaneled jury dare not if we are honest, pretend to give a clear and unbiased judgment judg-ment on the merits of this case. So humiliatingly prolific in verbosity are some of us, and so confusedly con-fusedly prone to form indigested opinions on questions that are admittedly knotty for those whose profession it is to determine and whose minds, by learning experience and practice, are best fitted to pronounce judgment. But to cap the climax of this seemingly public folly, there has been added the other impudence of spreading broadcast through the land a detailed account of testimony which had been better pent up behind the closed doors of a courtroom. . There is sometimes justification for the disclosure disclos-ure of evil practices and an exposition of crime, for we are best guarded against evil when we hare been made acquainted with its methods of attack and the location of its ambush; but there is no justification for graphic descriptions and suggestive sugges-tive details that do not so much teach a defense. against evil as develop a morbid desire to become better acquainted with the very lineaments and coloring col-oring of vice's disgraceful features. Xot where it is. and how to avoid is, the lesson taught by these imprudent disclosures; but how it may be practiced prac-ticed with impunity and how artfully may be concealed con-cealed our acquaintance or intimacy with vice is more often inculcated. Yice naked we abhor, but vice half concealed under the dress of artful diction, dic-tion, vice presented by suggestion that fires the imagination im-agination attracts us. And vice is naked oidy to the experienced mind, but vice, particularly some forms of it. in the eyes of the young ahd inexperienced inex-perienced generally wears the painted face and the padded form of those whose lost physical perfection has been restored by the magic influence of the subdued footlight and the colored calcium spot. It is therefore, to say the least, a manifest imprudence to spread out profusely on printed page the glowing glow-ing pictures of a ruined virtue, to display the conquests con-quests of cunning crime and the arts of vehement passion to the untutored minds of those who arc impressed more with the tactics of vice than with the means of defense against its attacks. That mother were rightly deemed prudish, who through a weak and injudicious delicacy were to fail to forewarn her daughters, according to their age. against the physical and moral dangers that might beset them; but that mother were deemed foolish indeed, that under the pretense of teaching worldly wisdom were to acquaint their pure imaginations imag-inations with crude scenes of unveiled debauchery and corrupt their hearts with experience in immoral im-moral practices. Warp delicacy of feeling, abash modesty, dethrone pure ideals and uproot pure affections af-fections by barefaced exhibition of their contraries and you have robbed the girl's home of its freshness fresh-ness and its grace and whilst you have made moral amazons. you have unmade Christian maidenhood. Yes, it is well that timely warning against future threatening dangers; but that warning is most effective ef-fective for good when it is given with the prudent secrecy of a watchful parent's counsels. The abhor-ence abhor-ence for vice is not most effectively cultivated when vice is clad in attractive paraphernalia and made to ride boldly and proudly on parade in the gaze of the multitude, but rather when its ungraceful form is described under bated breath, as when the Roman mother's frightened wayward children by whispering the awe-inspiring name of Rome's implacable im-placable enemy, the all conquering Carthaginian. Ie were better than, if in this instance, our public press gave less prominence to these imputed misdeeds mis-deeds and if it refrained from casting by that exaggerated ex-aggerated prominence the glamour of notoriety on what prudent fathers and mtohers would hide from this already too-knowing generation. It were wiser, if they continued the, actors in this play les; in the trappings of heroes and heroines, and clothed the narrated events less with the pompous garb of an epic. Particularly, as it is not yet known if any one in this mournful melodrama can lay just claim to any heroic part. And even were it shown that a mi.nd unbalanced -by sorrow had assumed the mournful role it were yet to be deplored that the j i i ends of justice had been sought with the effusion of blood by private hands. And it were particu htrlv to be deplored, if in the course ot thi3 trial, ill were .hown that a human soul unwarned and unprepared un-prepared had been launched into the fearful futur-whence futur-whence no voice may return to speak the defense of a blackened rputation. 4 |