The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-06-30
A BIG KILLING"
How Edward and Dora
"Fit BLEED and Died"
"0ver Yonder''.

About seven o'clock yesterday after
noon a succession of hack drivers
rolled excitedly UP in their carriages
to the police station with the startling
intelligence that "dey is killing Ed
Cooper out yonder."
Whereupon Captain Bob Conrad
and L "Went yonder;" and, indefinite
as was the locality named, we found
it, There was no installing the place,
heterogeneous crowd marked it from
afar. There were frowsy women and
unkempt children and shirt sleeved
men and unWashed humanity, of all
coIors and in all degrees Of dishabile.
They gossiped and crowded together
and pushed curiouSly against the
palings of a small and dirty yard
which enclosed IL small and dilapi-
dated house, from whence even to the
middle distance came the sounds of
strident strfe-the high screams of
an angry woman, the gutteral remon-
STRANGE of a man who was but not so
much for conflict as for self preserva-
ton. Occasionally there came the
crash of smashing crockery, the rend-
ing sound of furniture going into
kindling wood. Whereupon two little
waits of the streets, holder than their
fellows, nearly tumbled from their
perch beside the dusty window panes
with the estactic excitement of that
which their eyes beheld.
All this was at the corner of Per
son and Cabarrus streets and within
the house were Ed. Cooper, one of
the colored gentry of the "hacks
and Dora Perry.
There had been doings within. The
bed wabbled on three uncertain legs,
the bureau reeled drunkenly against
the wall, its glass clinging to the
frame in fragments. The floor was
covered with water and the jagged re-
mains of bowl and pitcher, the up
turned glass of a smashed lamp made
dangerous walking for the bare feet
of Dora and Edward. Bed clothes
were scattered about in wild confu-
sion the paper prints on the wall hung
crafty by their corner lacks. the
chairs lay broken on their backs as
they had fallen as they tripped the
way of charge and counter charge.
When Captain Conrad opened the
door and let into the dark and gloomy
room the - flood of light,
Dora sat in one corner, Edward in
another. 1T was as though Whirl-
wind OF other than their own making
had wrought this havoc and
at one another resentfully at the po-
liceman with a certain sad philosophy
Of mien.
The woman muttered continually
that there was coin which she had
possessed which was not; the man
laughed brutally at the pathos OF her
distress and, nursing bleeding ear,
spoke irritably of a pitcher which had
been hurled in his direction. And
all Ohio And KKr1 \
unscemly interference? Could not a
gent and a lady amicably adjust their
differences in peace-in the privacy of
the lady's home? Surely that was
uniust-and undemocratic!
Nevertheless the blue coat of the
law stood in persuasive attitude-an
attitude that promised CO. as
well. And Dora and Ed. were march
cd out-out from the midst of their
lovers brawl-out from the lady's
desolated nest-into the rain and be-
fore the stolid eyes of their neighbors.
parted. while yet young and full OF
the ioy of life and the fun of fight, by
the BRASS buttons and the blue au-
thority of policeman's coat.
And the people who looked on
who packed the sidewalks and over
flowed into the road? They did not
bat an eve 1t was all in the day
work. slightly Favored bit of the
DAVIS routine They had never moved.
For thirty minutes they had listened
calmly to the sound of battle; they
had not interfered, or sighed or laugh
ed. 1t was commonplace to them. Idly
they had listened to the din, IDLY
they REGARDED the policeman and the
reporter in his carriage. The one
they had duly expected; the other
they accepted as one of the queerly
actuated life currents that ebb and
flow somewhere "oyer at the market.