The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-12-20

followed me into all my haunts about the
premises, and it was with considerable
difficulty that lodged her when / start
ed in search of rum. Even when / was
intoxicated I felt religiousy impelled to
treat her with docility and kindness; and
soon learning that her father was vast
ing his substance in drunkenness and
riotous living, she set about to win me
back the more earnestly, exacting baby
promises by fastening her tiny arms about
my neck.
At length I noted a change for the worse
in my own disposition toward the child.
When I would return home late at night
far spent with wine / would conceive a
creepy feeling that the little girls con-
duct was in omen of impending i'll, and
it was not until had slept off the poison
thus beclouding my brain that / could
entirely free myself from this dangerous
presentiment. And then when / had re-
turned to reason and to myself, would
laugh at the hideous nightmare. But at
once upon another continuous drunk, the
same foreboding would invariably return
much complicated and intensified.
One memorable night when / came home
from low dive in the city, this disease,
this leprosy of the soul, took on new and
diobohcal proportions. I was sitting in
the library, as was my custom under
such compromising circumstances, when
suddenly In my imagination this little
darling OF my heart became myriad
poisonous reptiles whose forked tongues
and loaded teeth were glitterng fright
fully in the lamplight. They had wound
and tied themselves in a million knots
about my neck, and L was looking into
their eyes charmed, spellbound, and posi-
lively power,ess to move. The child would
then hurriedly, reconvert herself into all
her former innocence and loveliness.
went out into the open arr, deliberated
and laughed at my mad dream I went
back. Hardly had entered the room be-
fore this devilish dream came again with
a more all-pervading irresistibilty, and L
decided there that the baby must die.
1 approached her little trundle-bed with
the deft, stea'thy tread of a panther. l
touched her cheek, with my hand.
She was sleeping peacefully. There
was a slight movement Of her tiny,
red lips, as if she whispered in her bliss
full, untroubled dreams. The short raven
ringlets of hair were tossed in wild aban-
don about her temples. Her dim
pied hand was flung carelessly out on the
snow white coverlet, and it grpped my
little finger in unconscious affection when
touched it. There was something inef-
fably sweet, gentle and submissive about
her lying there in her innocent slum
ber-so much so that my false cour
age almost deserted me. She attempted
to scream, but I choked, gagged her. And
there in the holy calm of the midnight
hour 1 redeemed my hands in my off
springs blood and walked out from that
room a dripping assassin. With my own
hands / carved her body, distorted her
features and mangled the form until the
corpse was unrecognizable.
1 am told that no grief is so hopeless:y
insupportable as that accompanied by a
| consciousness of wrong, and have arriv-
cd at the conclusion that there is no falla
cy in the reasoning. If the man who dis.
covers no culpable conduct of his own to
occasion his misery, still writhes under
an intolerable weight of woe, what must
be my uncomfortable lot with the ever-stab-
blng memory of my most loathsome and
abboners crime?
And while I note the erection of the scat
fold upon which l am to settle with soce-
ty and with God, from within these cank-
cred cells, I pause to wonder if per-
chance l have a sympathizer among those
who know the deliriums Of too much
drink