Arizona sentinel and Yuma weekly examiner., 1911-12-28

the grief that the killing had laid upoD him.
 So it was with gallant old Gen Mol ineuX. He, however, was spared the grim horror of knowledge of a sons guilt, for he firmly believed in Rol- ands innocence of the murder, and his fight for the youths acquittal was urged on not only by affection but by confidence in the triumph of justice.
 Another father who was buoyed up to the last by faith in his boys inno- cence was A. F. Tucker, whose son Charles was put to death for killing Mabel Page To the very last he was firm in this faith. He kept up the fight to prove his son innocent right to the hour of execution, and in one of his petitions to the governor for elem ency he expressed in sentence the tragedy of the parent whose son is accused of grave crime: "Our hearts are bursting with anguish
 Such case as this was that Of Henry Clay Beattie, the Richmond banker, whose son has been convict ed of murdering his young wife. He kept up the fight, having appealed for a new trial, without result. The fa- over the wild career that led his wayward son into these direful straits.
 Much was written about Carlyle Harris mother when that boy was on trial for killing his young wife, and old Charles Harris, the father, was mentioned only incidentally. Back into the shadows cast by his strong wife sank the figure of the unsuccess- full old man. Nobody paid any atten- tion to him. He was alone with his great sorrow
 When Dr. Crippen was being hunt ed, tried and put to death for killing his wife lonely old man in Califor- mia followed the reports of the case with trembling interest. Myron A. Crippen was too old to be of any help to the son who had left him long ago. Though unheralded, the greater trag- edy was the fathers, not the sons. When Albert Wolter was convicted of killing Ruth Wheeler his old father,- a veteran of the Franco-Prussian war, felt the blow as long-delayed retr1- button for the one great sin of hls life, and so expressed himself. Albert was the child of woman Carl Albert Wolter had known in Germany. De- serting the mother and baby, the elder Wolter had come to America and welded another woman. She had died and he, stricken by remorse, had sent for the mother and child to join him in America and had legitimatized the one by wedding the other.
 "The Sins of the Fathers"
 And now this child had committed a murder so fiendish in it's horror that the old Prussian soldier bowed his head under the shock and murmured words about the sins of the fathers being visited upon their children.
 Another case was that of Gen. Jere- miah V. Messerole of Brooklyn, whose son, Darwin J. Messerole, killed Theo- dore w. Larbig in a fight The old soldier fought bravely to save his son and the verdict of acquittal, followed as it was by the young mans conver- sion and reception into Plymouth church, was balm to the fathers wounded heart AI
 There can scarcely be doubt about the grizzled Confederate veteran, Col, T. V. Richeson, believing in his sons innocence But the tragedy of such an accusation against dearly be- loved son is less only than that of his conviction.
 These fathers whose gray hairs are brought down in sorrow to the grave. as the patriarch Jacob expressed 1t, are tragic figures They appeal for sympathy, but their weight of woe is too heavy to be alleviated by words New York World