The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1883-05-09
Reaso1l ill srlcll nlrtter,a saws. aSYht alld q

Reason IN such matters SAYS aAyhy add t.
the ru n already wrought the crime of muir
der? Why visit upon the male baramour
the fatal consequences of act which may
have been invited by the woman In the case
LIS 1t not enough that a guilty wife has de-
stroyed herself and disgrace her home, bya
| course of treachery and turpitude,. the nature
OF which she was bound to comprehend but
that the husband stall precipitate himself in
the destruction and stain his hands with blood
on account of so faithless and SO base a crea-
tnrez' On the other hand, feeling, more potent
than reason, steps in and says ~Fhbs il the
ollss onense among men which only be
eKpiated IN blood The law is able to rlghten
nothing. 1t can give adequate damage. 1t
is helpless before that blight hiciI worse than
death, defiowers the hreside dismantles the
household, and thrusts INTO nature itself a
poison aud doubt Hence, no man can
be said to be above suspicion, 80 every man
knows very well that he take his life IN his
hands when he allows himself, either by his
Inst or by solicitation, to appropriate to him
self the wife of another.
TRYING the Thompson-Davis tragedy by rs
standard, how does it fare? The undisputed
facts of the csse are these: Mr.. Thompson
started for Washington, accompanied by his
wife as far as Cincinnati; he babe her good-by
and continued his journey, expecting her 10 re
turn to Harrodsburg that same evening; in
stead of doing this she went to another hotel
where she registered and was assigned a room
Mex: day DAVIS appears in Cincinnati. He
meets Mrs Thompson, how or where it mat
ters not, and they spend the afternoon and
evening together They return to the hotel
about O'Clock at night in state of intoxica-
ton. He does not conduct her to her room, or
the apartment of her kinsWoman whose pres
ence furnishes pretext for her soiour1; he
thrusts her into his owsa room and they re-
main there an hour more. As to these
points there is no denial 1t is simply claimed
that there was no criminal intimacy 1t is next
to impossible to prove negative; but is there
not here an almost certain presumption of
guilt? If husband should fail to act upon
such proof of his friends treachery and his
wises infidelity, what would he act on? The
theory of innocence is absurd The theory of
qualified guilt has to be strained to the full
tension of tue most gHihble credulity and stli
leaves the injured man sense of shame and
wrong too great for endurance Until Mr.
Thompson left Washington he knew only that
instead Of returning home, his wife had stayed
over i'll Cincinnati, where she had disgraced
herself Davis part in the transaction was a
revelation to him TWAS then that TO make
sure, he investigated all the facts and found
them we have detailed them The conclu-
sion irresistible. He had just two Things
to do; to pack his trunk and take himself of
like whipped cur, an exile from the home his
fathersshad founded and himself had honored
or put the betrayer, alike of his domestic peace
and his private friendship, out of his way for
ever. 4
No man viii say it was not a hard alterna
tive. But desperate cases require desperate
remedies. Mr.. Thompson did, his duty
anu only his duty, and there is no man OF
sense or spirit who, standing In his place aud
surveying the circumstances with a bleeding
heart but would feel, the supreme act having
been done, at least one thrill of satisfaction
amid the grief and horror the desoiation and
the tlismay of the scene
Of the dead man il is needless to speak
Those who knew him describe him as the soul
OF generosity and honor. 1t may be so. He
may lie III bloody grave and the awful havoc
which has followed may be the consequence of
noth hing worse than drink A terribleltemper-
ance lecture ii it bo So But sympathy with
the dead must not blind us into wrong to the
living There are other innocent hearts that
bleed outside of the David mansion, and in look
ing into the conduct OF Mr. Thompson we must
in reason consider the standpoint the provo
cation and the proof from which he fired the
fatal shot This is, III reality. the key to the
whole position; and giving the unhappy gen
tieman who has paid the penalty of his act
whether it was one OF guilt or folly, with has
life ask in fairness whether enough does
not remain admitted to justify the killing9