The Washington times., 1911-09-08
IMPRESSIONS LEFT BY THE
VIRGINIA DRAMA.

One of those gripping tragedies il
which life as it really is makes i'll
stagecraft counterfeit seem impoteni
and pale has reached elimination
Under the eager scrutiny of an aviC
public the crimson record has unfoldec
to the final page. 1t has localized ma
tional interest to the exclusion Of
those resounding issues which the moot
court of craftsmanship calls paramount
1t has caught the eye and kindled the
imagination and stirred the heart after
that eternal fashion with which blood
has appealed to blood since Cain, with
the mark Of murder on his brow, took
sanctuary in the land Of Nod.
II would be hasty to call this NOR,
bid interest. These human documents
these transcripts from life itself, are
part and parcel of those seething activi,
ties which make up the sum of human
experience. The man in the street who
would take but languid glance al
the work of Terence still translates
into his daily life and thought the pulls,
ing Romans worthy boast: 81 am q
man; and nothing which concerns hu.
manity can fail to concern me-"
1t is from these compelling tragedies
written large in the daily record-it is
from the bubbling cauldrons in which
have just been melted smiles and tears
crime and punishment, virtue and shame
that a residuum stands forth for
the profit of mankind. Where sermons
with their obvious moral tag fall trite
and Intellectual, events like these which
penetrate every Granny of the social
structure carry with them lesson so
intimately interviewer with their very
texture That it sinks insensibly into
the mind and heart. Even the deadly
nightshade has its perfume.
To the normal mind it is well-nigh
inconceivable that young man in the
full enjoyment of health and worldly
competency, with a wife and child as
hostages to fortune, should coldly and
cruelty break into the bloody house of
life, violate the sacred instincts which
the beasts of the field hold dear, and,
expiating his wanton blood-lust,
Leave a name at which the world turns
pale,
To point a moral or adorn a tale.
And yet the very beginnings of So
ciety are but the safeguards in which
man takes refuge from his brother,
and the hearthstone has been stained
with every crime. In the case at bar
the body of the crime has been estab-
Iished, and it remains for the twelve
arbiters of life and death to say
whether it has been brought home to
the defendants door.
1t would seem puny to. the point Of
mockery to dwell upon the agony which
must scar the. very soul of Henry
Beattie if he be guilty, as charged. The
hideous hours must come when as
surance and bravado have died within
him, and he stands alone with a con-
science which lashes him with a
scourge of scorpions. The heart
knoweth its own bitterness, and we
can but dimly guess what his feel
ings must be as he realizes that the
life he has. led has at least given color
to the fearful Indictment drawn against
him.
That no hue should be wanting to
this tangled skein of tragedy, his
father seems to have been type of
high integrity. The obligations which
the young husband assumes when he
establishes that unit of citizenship, the
home, found frequent expression in the
disapproval with which the elder
Beattie looked upon the derelictions of
his Con: And yet it was in a measure
due to his own indulgence, to the too
fond affection for the flesh of his flesh,
that the tragedy has come about.
The French gave us the catch word
of crime: Look for the woman. She
was not far to seek in the sordid drama
which has just unfolded itself in the
legal procedure at chesterfield. The
womanf The child! And therein lies
the pitiful aspect of it all. There must
be queer slant to the moral nature
of anyone who can look with anything
but the deepest commiseration upon the
short life, history of this soiled fedg-
ling. At a time which should have
been her doll-baby days she had trod
the hot plowshares of motherhood,
with none of the sanctity which glori-
fies a mothers name. She had grown
up in moral miasma. That which
should have been the asylum of inno--
cence was the nursery of shame. If
only negatively, if only by the lack
of that restraint so essential TO the un-
folding of the flower of womanhood,
her childish steps were set in . quag-