The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1907-01-31
Langdon Smith in the New York Amer

H/NAA oiNG Jho6S VI JuiJf VI
E\Vk memory of the man he has
slain; more than the ghost of
death that ever glides at his heels, Harry
Thaw fears the eyes of the three alien
lists who sit in the court room day by
day, watching intently every move he
makes.
These three alienists are DR.. Mcdonald,
DIR. Mabon and DR.. Flint. They are there
when the prisoner comes into the room.
They are there when he leaves. There are
hundreds of other eyes gazing, peering,
seowling, smiling, but the prisoner feels
only the six.
He feels that they are the eyes Of
enemies. Out of all the eyes in the court
room, they alone follow him from his
chair by his counsels table into the
dreadful obscurity of his stone cell. There
was never a hunt of spectres that could
surpass this constant scrutiny Sleep
ing and waking they are with him. Day
time and nighttime they stare at him with
the merciless questions: Are you in
sane?" do your hands tremble?" do
your eyeldes futter?" Are your knee
joints in proper shape?''
out the searching inquiry. 1t is no won
der, therefore, that Thaw, sitting with
his hair dangling in black banks over
his pallid forehead, is almost afraid to
move His limbs are rigid, his elbows
stuck out. his chin buried in the hollow
of his hand II perchange he shifts his
chair, his round, staring eyes shape them
selves into an inquiry: WAS that crazy
move?" did I do right that timer
Then glances at the alienists as they
make marks in their little red notebooks,
and his face, the color of barley dough,
flushes into a dusky red.
Why does Thaw fear them? Why Is
blood red? Because he fears insanity more
than death. He never twists turns
from the horror his own hand has made
but the nameless psychopathic terror. of
those eyes seems more than he can bear.
Although the eyes of the three atenists
are gray and keen and kindly, the pris-
oner seems to feel for them the resentful
fear of a tiger for his puny trainer above
all other men. He fears the piercing
CLEAN of intelligence. The eyes are not
fancies that he can shatter as he WILL
They draw him as truly as the lodestone
draws iron. His mind wanders at its
cables length about the room. going,
returning, but always drifting around to
its focal point, with a feeling of helpless
rage.
II IT NAV be presumed that he is in the
first stages of insanity, he would act
Just as he has acted in the past, and is
acting now-as a peevish automaton
wrapped in perplexity. He seems pos
sessed of vast and confused anxiety,
through which nothing pierces so sharp
ly and keenly as the eyes" All these
things impress themselves almost uncon-
sciously upon the observation.
His efforts to outdo and defy the three
crminoiogists are at times very marked
His eyes wander uneasily from juror to
juror with the unspoken question: "Will
you take my life?' Then he looks at the
iudge-the personification of blind and
portly justice. with big moustache-then
he gazes at the morbid crowd, where not
a man gazes back again--then at his wife
without the semblance OF smile, If she
is at the heart of his hopes you would
not know 1t.
Next he looks at his mother. Here he
cannot quite conceal some sort of feel
ing-it may DE a kind of wondering spec
ulation as to whether she still loves him.
He is treasured as he looks.
His round eyes deepen into something
like tenderness as he sees her there
a patient figure in black.
But he Is coming back to his one mes
meric point-the point of his deepest fear
He fights against it a bird fights
against the wiles of a serpent. The
crowd. intent upon the trial, does not
note his shifting and shrinking. and the
tense set of his face. which indicate the
trepidation of his soul.