The Monitor-register., 1897-09-10
FATAL OVERSIGHT.
A Brief Narrative Showing the Dangc
of a Lapse of Mentality.

A Brief Narrative Showing the Danger
of a Lapse of Mentality.
The discussion had turned upon that
peculiar condition of a PERSONS mind
which will not warn him when he is
doing or about to do something that can
only result disastrously, Or, i'll less se-
rious cases, which will make him ap-
pear silly to the very verge of insanity
as, for instance, when a person goes to
see a friend at a house when he knows
the person has not lived there for
weeks, or he will go to a bank on a hol-
iday without ever thinking of the holi-
day till he finds the door shut.
(Which reminds me-" said a war de-
partment clerk, "of a page out of the
story of my life when I was doing bust
ness for myself, and before politics
ruined me and drove me into the gov
ernment service. l had an acquaintance
in a bucket shop who made a lot Of
money, mostly by skinning people, and
l used to tell him to look out or some Of
them would fix him some time in a way
he didn't like, but would stop him off
just the same. To this he replied with
a laugh, but one morning when / went
to my office I noticed that the glass in
his door was broken, and it excited my
suspicion, as he and 1 were the only &C.
cupants at that time of the floor, which
was ten stories up. The door was open,
and I saw my neighbor sitting at his
desk dead and a hole in his head which
might have been made with a pick.
"It was murder, of course, but it was
not robbery, for nothing was disturbed,
and | felt that my prediction had come
true. There was no clew, however, and
though the police made every effort
nothing could be discovered to show
who had done the deed. The victims
brother had taken his papers from the
desk the morning Of the murder, and
they had not been examined for three
days. On the fourth day the brother
showed up, with a will made by his
brother and dated the day of the muir
der. The will was brief, making the
brother the sole legatee, and, strangely
enough, it bore the name as witness OF
a man who had been ruined by the dead
man. As soon as l saw the signature ]
took an officer and went to the witness
house, where we found him. l had got
the officer up to the proper pitch by my
talk on the way there, and as soon as
the man appeared in the room where
we were the officer arrested him for the
murder of the broker. 1t was a bluff,
but it worked, and the man broke down
and confessed the whole thing. Then he
seemed to be easier in his mind, and he
wanted to know how we suspected him.
I showed him the will, with his sigma
ture as witness, and his surprise was
genuine when he threw up his hands
and for the first time realized what he
had done by putting it there.
81 asked him how it happened, and
| he told us that he had gone to the bro
ker's office late at night, as he had done
on other occasions, when no one was
about, and had tried to get him to let
him have back part of the money he
had lost, but the man tainted him, and
it had crazed him, and he caught up q
miners pick and was about to brain
him with it when the broker, to gain
time or a chance to escape, had asked
him to let him make his will before he
died, and, just to humor him, he had
done so. Then the broker told him that
it was not legal unless witnessed and
asked him to witness it. There the
strange part of the whole thing came
in, for, without ever thinking what the
result would be, and having only in
mind the humoring of the victim, he
had written his full name. And, v
stranger, he had never thought of it I'M
til / showed him the will.
"All of which was fully exhibited at
the trial, and the man was acquitted on
the grounds of emotional insanity" -
Washington Star.