The San Francisco call., 1898-01-28
FRATRIcIDB CLARK RIDES INTO sT. HELENA

Clark. the most despicable of mur- derers, has passed physically un- scathed through the first day of his preliminary examination. The days work Is over. Clark. the Sheriff. and his deputies are back in Napa. and no sign of the threatened lynching has been manifested.
 The streets were crowded here this morning as the team containing the four men drove rapidly by. Of course, there were men watching, but there were also women. any number of them, standing on the sidewalk to get a glimpse of the man. whose crime is the only thing that makes him worth looking at. There were children, too, for school was out, and on one corner father stood holding his baby high in his arms, while little farther toward the Town Hall. in an invalid chair, sat a woman. who had been brought out that she might not miss the sight
 The whole day has been taken up with Mrs. Clark's examination and cross-examination. All day she sat so near to George Clark that he could touch her if he stretched out hand. repeating words that might scorch woman's lips. Yet her voice, though weak and subdued at first, showed no emotion. She had the grace to hide
 
 she spoke in so low tone that her words were scarcely audible. But if Mrs. Clark were a sensitive woman-a sensitive Mrs. Clark would be para dox-I know she would have endured enough in this one days pillorying to atone for the horrible life her words made shamefully vivid.
 Mrs. Clark had an opportunity to avoid the repetition of that unspeak- ably shameful story she had already | told. When District Attorney Bells inquiries showed that ne intended to question the woman as to her relations with her brother-in-law, Attorney Ho- gan interfered and asked Justice Chinn
 
 not answer the District Attorneys | questions if she didn't want to.
 Mrs. Clark sat with downcast eyes, | her profile, which. by the way. Is not l so bad. dimly seen through her thick | veil, while the lawyers wrangled. Jus tice Chinn advised her that answering | the question was optional.
 Then he said: Do you wish to an- swer?"
 'I want to do what's for my own best" Mrs. Clark answered, in low, | complaining voice and signing heavily. | "Of course, it's very painful for me to go over my past life. But everybody | knows it, and I might as we'll tell It."
 And she did. She told particulars, | under the District Attorneys cross questioning, that a normal woman would have suffered martyrdom before | admitting She told of the beginning i of the vile history. She told of George | Clarks boyhood, when he was a pupil | at the school she taught in Illinois, and | he would make the fires and in a gen. eral way do janitor work for the school | marm She told of her marriage to her | husband, when she was 25 and William | Clark was 23 and George, the murder CT, was a lad of perhaps 13. She told | of the long years during which she out ragged the simplest canons of decency. She described scenes with the murder CT, when she called for her daughters | years there had not been even resist ance on her part to George Clark's | making his brothers home an abom- inable, bestial place. She described the little house where the tragedy took place and where, on the night before