The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1893-09-09
.CUkIOSIIIES OF GRIM b.

/ CURIOSITIES OF CRIME.
SOME VICES THAT HAVE BE-
,=.= gscoME EPIDEMIC.
Atrocities Committed without Plausi-
bic Motive-strange Propensity Of the
Human Race to Destructiyeness- Ma MIA
of the Fire Bug. s.5ss5
- Man has been called an .tanimal
with the privilege OF self-destruc-
tion, but the criminal anOmalie les of
the human mind are by no means
limited to a penchant for suicide.
When wolf rends flock, Of sheep
or a mink depopulates whole poul-
try farm in a single night their in
spring motive is not gratuitous
cruelty as much as a wish to make
the best of a lucky chance and pro-
vide supply of food for the need Of
less propitious times. -
In beings of our species, on the
other hand, the propensity of de-
structiveness has often assumed a
form that appears to make the lux
ury of murder it's own reward. In
the default of other victims the
buccaneers of the seventeenth CEN
fury would attack one another, and
the troops OF the Ghengis khan
how led for carnage like the Roman
rabble for the blood of the arena
victims and the idle pelados of Ma
drid for the bonfires of the inquisition.
There have been amateur assassins
who disdained to avail themselves of
a chance of plumber, but stabbed
strangers in the dark for the sole
purpose of enjoying the consequent,
sensation; and the mania of Jesse
Pomeroy is by no means without
precedent
About the end of the sixteenth
century country baron in the neigh
borhood of Auxerre, France was be-
seiged in his own chateau by a mob
of peasants, who, with more and more
emphasis, demanded the return of
their children, or at Least satisfac-
tory explanation of their fate; Mem
sieur le baron, it seems, had, under
some pretext or other, enticed at,
least twenty youngsters to- his castle,
and failed to account for their disap.-
pearance till the feudal submissive
ness of his serfs exhausted it's re-
sources OF appeal, and the dis
tracted relatives of the missing chill
dren were joined by a vendetta mob
of several hundred armed rustics. -:
The magistrates of Auxerre had
postponed the proposed investigation;
in Difference to the protests of the
baron's brother,a wealthy abbot, who
denounced the whole matter as a.
marotte jacquere-@ clodhopper's
craze; but the formidable spread of
the revolt had at last obliged the,
baron to surrender himself to- res
cuing party of militia, and an impair
tial trial established the fact that the
defendant had spent considerable
sum in bribing his domestics to kid
nap twenty-five children and assist
him in terturing them to death with
every refinement of cruelty.
Judge Armstrong, of Leeds, has.
made a study of the arson mania,
tending to prove that in three out of
five cases the motive Of the firebug
is not revenge, but an unexplained.
and apparently irresistible penchant
for mischief. The supposed delight
in the pyrotechnic grandeur OF a con-
Migration is only a secondary factor
of that propensity, for in Northern.
Italy numerous individ uals-mere
boys, some of them have BEEN az
rested and punished for miscellaneous,
tampering with the bikes that line.
the principal rivers of Lonlbardv.
In some cases the offenders pretended
to have resisted the evil impulse for.
weeks, in the firm belief that the in
stigator of crime must be il demonio,
in person, but were apparently un-
able to resist the temptations Of the
fun to inundate whole township by
a few minutes of midnight work
with a spade.
There are strong reasons to sus-
pect that the freaks of Judge Lynch
are occasionally due to similar mo-
tives, and it is a suggestive circum-
stance that the rwhite-cap outrages
are less frequent in the lawless and
regulation-needed border lands of
the Southwest than in the states
where the scarcity of game and in
frequency of social sensations de-
prive the natives of ready-made
chances for exciting pastimes. =:
In the Pyrenees bands of rust1cs
camp for weeks in the wilderness of
highland forests, living on roasted
beech nuts and enduring untold hard
ships till their scouts at last report a
fair chance of running the blockade
of the frontier guards, and cargo
of contraband can be spirited across
the border at a compensation of six
reals (about seventy-fve cents9 per
week of danger sweetened toll
Game stealing exercises an analogous
charm on Austrian farmers, album
dainty able to afford the small ex-
penses of a hunting license; but in
recognition of the difference between
nj