The Portland daily press., 1878-06-14

fatal shot was still in the barrel; and the ball
extracted from the head of the murdered woman
fits the cartridge she'll After he was arrested,
Billings sent a servant to ask his daughter
whether she would like to see him before he
went to prison. Miss Jennie, who is young
lady of eighteen, begged him to go up stairs to
her room. While they were sobbing together,
his brother-in.law attempted to break into the
room and attack him; and when the wretched
prisoner was conducted out of the house he had
to pass by the parlor where the remains of his
murdered wife were awaiting burial
"Do you see the velvet coat and wide
awaken said Mr.. George Coleman to an
American lady-"let me introduce Mr.. Charles
Reade." Aud the American continues thus;
"a tall, slender, fne-looking man is Mr..
Reade, with gray hair and mustache; broad
forehead and peculiar dilating blue eye. We
came to speak of Lucy Fountain in Love Me
Little, Love Me Long but Mr.. Reads had
almost completely forgotten his boyish heroine.
%, write no more such books said he; I am
going to instruct the public now; not amuse.
shall take up vital subjects henceforth; am
going to tear the masks of off wrongs, errors
and corruptions, and set them bleeding until
they are healed The Woman Halter was
mask-tearing in some respects. 1t was bril-
liant novel. You kept your secret we'll for a
time, L said; the authorship of that work, as
it appeared first in Blackwood, was not sus-
pected anywhere and think saw it first
announced in an American journal as by your
SELF o yes, he said; 'it was woman who
found it out She put the question to Mr..
Blaokwood in such way that he maintained
blank silence, and tina. was confessing that she
had hit the right hand. She might have been
good and grand enough to keep silence, bat
how could she?'"
By the death of John A. MacGahan Journal
ism loses one of its most brilliant writer's and
pluckiest men. He was born in st. Louis in
1916, and wrote his first letter in Paris during
the fiery days of the Commune. He accom-
panied General Sherman's party to the Cau-
casus and subsequently joined the Russian ex-
pedition to Khiva. His experiences in that re-
markable campaign were admirably recounted
in Campaigning on the Oxus-a work that has
bsen widely read in the United States as we'll
as in England. Under the Northern Lights is
the title of another work, in which bis adven-
lures in the Arctic region are vigorously de-
scribed. His most important achievement
was his journey in Bulgaria in the spring and
summer of 1876. He rode on horseback from
village to village, visiting the scenes of
massacre and describing the horrors OF Turkish
rule in series of letters to the Daily News.
The whole world stood aghast when this gal.
liant American told his story, A wave of iu-
dgnatiou and horror swept over England and
the foreign policy of Government which had
refused to sign the Berlin Memorandum was
suddenly reversed and a way opened for the
Consta antinople Conference in which the Euro
pean Powers united in their demands upon the
Porte. Mr.. MacGahan was, ,uext to Mr.. Forbes,
the most brilliant war correspondent at the
front during the campaign of last year. He
crossed the Balkans with Ghourko and wit
messed the storming of the Gravitza redoubt
and the capitulation Of Osman's garrison. Hit
last literary labor was done in Constantinople
where he was collecting material for an e1
haustive work on the Eastern Question. Hs
dies at thirty-two, brave, handsome. generous and
thoroughly equipped for literary effort of per
manent value.