New Britain herald., 1926-08-02
ARISTOCRAT AND
 PEASANT MEET
Pig-WOnan May Be Nemesis of
 Mrs. Hall

Somerville, N. J., Aug. 2.-One an aristocrat; the other a peasant!
 If ever there was dramatic social contrast, find it here in the persons of accused and accuser-Frances Stevens Hall and Jane Gibson. Perhaps the pithiest characteriza- l tion to be given the austere, cold al- most arrogant woman through whose arrest authorities hope finally to solve the Halls Mills murder mys- tery was that of a housemaid who recited the following into the of ficial records:
 Mrs. Hail is a Carpenter! A Carpenter would never show emo tion in the presence Of servant"
 And Jane Gibson. earth-woman, with peasants slavery to the soil and instinctive timidity of cities and peo- pie, whose characterization may be found in her own words.
 This has made me lot of trou- ble. I sometimes wish I'd never said anything. Things haven't been going smooth since that time. And here I got a new litter of pigs to attend to and cant take time for gadding around"
 Yet this gingham- clad Nemesis rises as the most substantial witness against the child of aristocracy.
 "She has never cried. Of course not" they say of Mrs. Hall at the jail where she waits here for the meeting of the grand jury. No. She showed little emotion other than an- noyance and anger.
 Mrs. Hall wearing her pride, re- minds one of those aristocratic ladies of French revolutionary days who sat tight Tipped at their knitting when the guillotine yawned. Smiles are born earily in describ- ing her One calls her "the iron woman; another, "the stone wom- an."
 Is it stoicism, or implanted pride, or nature barren of emotion? She is not one to solicit sympathy, and so not a great deal is likely to come her way.
 Mrs. Halls frigidity 1t was. ap- parently, that sent her husband. the Rev. Edward Wheeler Hall, in search of those warmer and more passionate natures that grow closer to the ground.
 Literature and history are filled with parallels of lords and dukes whose ladies lived in baronial auster- ity but whose loves lived in the tav- erns and farmsides.
 And the wound to the high ladies was more to the pride than to the heart. ...
 Not a dozen miles away from the mansion, in which the aristocrat lived, with fortune of million or more to draw from, and kin of high position and wealth, dwells the Nemesis.
 Here Is patched, barn looking dwelling. It tells mutely of struggle. Pigs squeal about the yard. It is not uncommon for one to go roofing up the small porch and over the threshold.
 Sun-up finds Jane Gibson out and working. Hers is the primitive struggle with the soil. Her anger vents against unyielding earth. The stubborn arrogance of soil, which yields only to infinite effort.
 A three-year- babe has come into the picture since she went mule riding on an errand which, she ayers, led her into the very shadow of the Hall-Mils crime and brought her face to face with woman she has said was Mrs. Hall.
 The child wears a little slip-on of cheap material, sewed hastily by lamp-light. The hair of the Nemesis struggles carelessly, and there is no need for anything but cheap clothes on a pig farm.
 She might stand as an artists model for the American peasant.
 
 These, then, are the two sharply branches of society that meet again.
 Two women, neither of whom could comprehend the other, both products of long gruelling toward different ends-and the lowly, by chance, cast into the role of Nemesis to the aristocrat.
 One in barred cell, looking upon the earth which begins to speak of the autumn chill ahead! Immobile, impressive - Mrs. Frances Stevens Hall, aristocrat. -.-... a-.-.
 One in T brackish open country side, the sticky mud of recent rains to blow through, concerned by the role Fate has given her only inso- much as it interferes with her work, now and then shooing a litter of pigs, now and then soothing a cry ing chili-Jane Gibson, peasant.
 If ever there was dramatic social contrast find 1t here in the persons of accuser and accused.