The San Francisco call., 1898-01-25
WEEPS AS
 HE TELLS OF
 HIS CRIME George Clark Says It Could Not Have Been Avoided. Impelled by an Irresistible Impulse to Slay His
 Brother. Believes That He Will Be Free and Share the Home of
 the Widow.
IS AN UNUSUAL CRIMINAL.
Weak Minded and Stupid, He Does Not Realize the EnOrnaity of
 His Act
Special Dispatch to The Call.

Special Dispatch to The Call
 NAPA, Jan. 24.-Of all the mild. in- offensive. meek individuals this George Clark, who murdered his brother, is the best example-a stout-shouldered man, not very tall, with his great awk- ward hands switching in his pockets or tugging at his black mustache, his tired and worried weak face turned question ingly first upon one and then the other; his dark eyes full of trouble, his man. ner hesitating, uncertain, miserable; his voice gentle with a stupid timidity that is like utterance of an unready child, and he speaks with lisp. Clark is an ignorant man and a very weak one; he is not a lout like Flannelly. He has a sort of friendliness that forbids surliness, and his helplessness, his in decision, his hesitating contradictions make one actually pity this wretch and wonder where he got the strength to make so momentous a decision as that involved in killing a man-and how he kept his courage at the sticking point when he got it theres
 Since making confession of all his crimes, Clark has vacillated. He told  that the jailer should be happy and all the world should share in his happi ness. He felt, he declared, at peace with God. Then, too, he made the astonish- ing statement that when he was freed he intended to lead a better life. It's enough almost to make one believe the insanity plea which it is said will be advanced in Clark's case to hear a oh hnTn of anything but the gallows for one who had made so complete a comics sion.
 But Clark is an unusual criminal-a very stupid one, and very bunglfng one too. There is not a particle of self-consciousness about him, none of that glorying in notoriety, which is the ordinary effect of sudden prominence, favorable or unfavGrabie. He Is the simplest fellow in the world, ready to speak, and, strangest of all, his words impress one with their sincerity. When I went into the jail to see him Clark was circumnavigating the inclosure that lights the kitchen below. He was not in his cell. but kept up dismal parade, his hands in his pockets, his wrinkled forehead bent and his eyes on the floor; just an ignorant, untrained Iaborer, too utterly lacking in the rudi- ments of civilization to be a clerk, too weak minded, too dull to be a me chanic I thought of Mrs. Clark's allu- sion to his temper-his rages, she called 1t, when she spoke to me, and I won dered that this dejected. slight man had character enough to rage.
 Despite the several sieges of inter viewing through which Clark passed, he treated me courteously, and gave me the one chair within the inclosure. while he perched upon the iron railing. eff I get out of here, if | ever get free" he said, "I'll go to work for Mrs. Clark and the children. I was always a friend of the children, and they liked me. too. I always bought things for them-clothes and food, too"
 This was said in a gentle. patient voice. The murderer was not brag- ging; he was not complaining.
 ''If you see her. tell her I ain't got no ill-will against her, no ill-feeling."
 "She doesn't feel that way toward you,'' I said, remembering the tone of Mrs. Clarks voice when she said: "He wants to see me and the children, but he shan't. LeaStwise the chill dren," she had added, in a ruminating afterthought.
 The deep lines in CIark's forehead deepened.
 We'll he said, 'I feel kind toward them, and if could see her could tell her things that would make her"
 His sentence drifted into the blind alleys of speech, which are the here alters of sentences uttered by those who are unaccustomed to express the foggy thoughts that are not mentally clothed in words.
 Are they all well?' he asked, after thinking a moment. The children, are they well?"
 One would have imagined a worried busy father, the pattern of domestic. ity, in place of this lawless creature whose crimes forbid even pitying thought.
 In speaking to the jailer this morn his brother.
 'I stood like this" he said, showing the pistol held in front of him, "an6 then when he said, It's early, George, CT something like that, I shot,
 And then this gentle murderer wiped the tears from his eyes as he described his brothers falling backward upor the kitchen floor.
 You repent it all, now?" I asked him. One naturally asks this man the elemental questions one would pro- pound to a child. His is so crude, SC rudimentary an intelligence.