The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1883-06-15
GOOD WORK.

All honor to Master Jim" Mutt
Of Uniontown, Pa! May his tribe
increase. He is brave and noble
boy who does honor to his father
and is worthy the love, the admira.
ton and almost reverence of his
sister. The affair which led to the
tragedy recorded in Wednesdays
issue of The HERALD is fresh in
the minds of the public. N. S.
Dukes, a lawyer, politician and
member-elect of the Pennsylvania
legislature, had been keeping COM
pany with the young daughter of
Captain Mutt, a gentleman who
stood high in local political circles.
A marriage had been agreed upon,
and the preliminary arrangements
were being made, when one day the
captain received letter from
Dukes, in which the latter asserted
his long continued criminal
intimacy with Miss Mutt,
charged that others whom he
namad had enjoyed her favors
also, alleged that she was little else
than a town strumpet, and declined
to fulfil his marriage promise.
Until that time no suspicion had
been cast upon the girls character,
her reputation in the community
where she had been born and raised
being absolutely free from reproach
The proper and justifable thing
for Mutt to have done upon the re-
ceipt of the letter would have been
to hunt Dukes down and kill him
on sight. It is impossible to con-
ceiVe a viler wretch than Dukes
letter showed him to be. Were his
accusations true he should have been
the last man in the world TO assai
the girl he had debauched; but the
fellows baSeness was intensified by
cruel invention and the wicked
stslander. It's generally accepted
that the unfortunate girl was in
nocent of all wrong-doing. In
stead of shooting Dukes to death as
he would skunk or other vile crea-
ture that had assailed him,
Captain Mutt, being a man
of peace, and desiring if posi-
bic to avoid scandal from
which he and his must unavoid-
ably suffer, sought meeting with
the slanderer with the intention of
adjusting the affair quietly. Dukes
appointed his own room In the hotel
as the place of meeting, and Mutt
went there at the designated hour,
whereupon Dukes deliberately
murdered him. Feeling in the
community ran high, the indigna-
ton against the slanderer and muir
derer being so intense that it was
thought the fellow would be
Iynched, However. the law was
permitted to take its course, and it
is one of the most remarkable in
stances of the miscarriage of Just
tice in criminal jurisprudence that
The jury acquitted the defendant.
Popular feeling was so outraged by
the circumstance that the Jurors
were PUBLICLY hung in ehigy las
they might well have been in
proprjG perSOnG.) Dukes left town.
and indignation meetings were held
warning him not to return.
However, he did not heed the ad.
monition; he went back to Union
town, and declared his intention TO
remain there or lie in the cemetery.
The public wisely let him alone
but young Mutt now comes to the
front as his fathers avenger and his
sisters vindicator. The law failed
in purpose and duty, and the son
was compelled to resort to the
higher law which is inherent in all,
and which sometime must step in
to Gil the gap left in the statutes.
Happily the lads aim was correct
and his arm steady. The work was
well done, and the commentator