Omaha daily bee., 1899-03-12
SAyAGES OF CIVILIZATIONS.
Poisoned Arrow Tips Supplnnted by
Poisoned Candy ana Bromide.

jIl.duNl IIll'L L -
The New York Knickerbocker Athletic
club poisoning case has ended in an indict-
ment and the next step will be the trial for
murder, and murder by poisoning at that,
of Molineux, a young man with a young
wife and a white-haired father holding a
high and honorable position.
Into the guilt or innocence of the athletic
young man who faces this ordeal 1t is not
necessary to enter. The New York news.
papers are already trying the case with a
personal interest and a partisan zest only
possible where Everybody about town"
knows and has seen the men, the women and
others who make up this hideous uncover
ing of the savages of civilization.
Murder was done. This is clear. Now
that it is known with what poison Mrs.
Adams was done to death the same poison
has been found in another yictim-Barnet.
But a foul death more or less is really
light gray by the blackness of the foul life
the inquest has laid bare.
The New York Athletic club, like the
gigantic baths of ancient Rome, is the last
product of a luxury rotten before it is ripe.
The examination before the coroner, most
OF which could be printed, which is more
than can be said for the coming trial, lays
bare a group of people of both sexes and all
sorts and conditions of foul indulgence cen
tering about this club. There were athletes
and men that pretended to be athletes, and
men that supported the club who were
neither athletes nor wanting to be, and all
about, like the characters in Ephra Behn's
plays, a perpetual horde of eXpectant
women. These people wore clothes and
lived in ceiled dwellings and belonged 20
athletic clubs" They were "about town, -
totsam and jetsam in the civilized whirl-
pool. Their outer semblance was that OF
civilized men and women.
But they were not. -clouted
savages or savages who had not even
reached the breech-clout could not have
matched these lurkers and lurchers in the
New York jungle. 1t was not a club but a
lair they lived in. Before the inquest was
over there was no crime which had not
been suggested, and the murder which was
charged was on the whole respectable by
the side OF the rest. Women there were
and men. They had visiting cards, they
were engaged and got married, money was
free all around and human life ana love
still freer, and all about were the cars and
cables, the soda water bottles and sprayers,
the baths and flats and clubs, ana the
poisons of a highly developed civilization.
But underneath was the ultimate un-
mltigated savage of the jungle, with all his
vices and none of his virtues, and poison
put up in a silver holder for the poisoned
arrow tip of the canebrake. Poisoning in
the New York Athletic club, poisoning across
the continent, staying in a Delaware home
from San Francisco, and everywhere the
same background OF Lillith, or worse or
both, fouling lives innumerable.
Due justice will have its way, but when
justice has had it's way and day there re-
mains the challenge to all the higher and
better force of society whether it be strong
enough, powerful enough and yigilant
enough to deal with these sayages of civil
cation or are they instead multiplying and
possessing the land as already they hold
some centers of city life, like the Knicker-
booker Athletic club?