Year: 1870

The general deduction that the intelligent
reader will draw from this brief and rapid
survey Is that France is likely to be isolated
unless at the eleventh hour Italy and, as we
have limited in former articles, Great Britain


come to the rescue; and In that combination


many read the shibboleth Of revolution.


The NIuddIiug Of Testimony In the Nathan
Murder Case.


Had the same ability been brought to bear
in Immediately taking possession of the house
on Twenty-third street, rendered forever
famous by one Of the most atrocious murders
that has disgraced humanity in our time, that
seems to have been put forth to obliterate all
genuine traces and confuse all rational testi-
mony that might disclose the perpetrator of
the crime, New York might well be proud of
her detective system; for assuredly never was
80 artistic a tumble of facts, dates, names,
people and implements brought about before.
The Internal broth of the witches In ''Mac-
BETH" with its ''double, double, toll and
trouble, would alone behttingly represent the
seething, changing mass Of assertions, contra
dictions, blunders, notifications and still more
stupendous blunderings again, real or ap-
parent, that have marked the progress of this
so-styled Investigation" 'Wool of bat and
tongue of dog have been plentifully inter-
mingled In the brew; but the wool
has been attempted to be drawn
over the eyes Of the public, and
the tongue of ''the dog" that Tapped the
blood of the murdered man, and lay all red
and eager to utter its evidence at his very
threshold, has been mufled and slenced. The
identity of everybody and everything has been
covered with dazzle and mist to the common
eye, and the hues and shapes Of the kaleido-
scope are not more varied and incongruous
than the pictures of patrolmen, sneak thieves,
papers, sleepy old gentlemen at windows over
the way, frightened young gentlemen in their
night clothes with and without whiskers,
bloody shirts in Philadelphia, which
every day since the fearful deed has seen
dancing up and down through the columns of
the press. A statement is hardly made in
reference to any one of those who were nearest
in time and location to the tragedy ere 1t is
contradcted with equal solemnity, and pistols
and prosecution are alike boldly limited as
determined means Of checking inquiry should
all other methods of arresting it have failed.
The iron instrument which was evidently used
to beat the life out of that gray head is made
to fit from the front door to the darkened
room of assassination, and back again to the
door, like will-o -the-wisp, only to leave
the perplexed inquirer at last in the
ditch of utter doubt and unbelief
The blood of the victim, which was daubed and
dashed and besprinkled on the wall, where
the dying man in his awful agony of terror and
death-struggling had been throttled and
desperately pressed and held against it, might
not, we are told, have left one little stain or
spot upon the clothing of the infuriate assassin.
The noise of that painting hand-to-hand fight
for life, the repeated blows and the thud Of
the falling body as loud as ''the slamming of a
door," which were, in all human probability,
the very sounds that riveted the attention of
two persons in another house, were not heard
by any one of all who were in the dwelling Of
the victim, so profound was their slumber on
that night of lightning and thunder 80 unusu-
ally terrible as to call for universal comment
all over this vast city and region Of twenty
miles radius around 1t


The electric fash, as the records of science
tell US, has more than once photographed the
most vivid and life-like images of objects upon
adjacent surfaces, and had that wonder been
repeated on the night of the Nathan murder,
does any one believe, in sober earnest, that
it could have revealed more startlingly and
faithfully upon the ceiling or the glass the
actual features of the assassin than did the
traces In the room of death reveal the process
of his work before they were confused and
obIiteratedp


This is an inquiry which, with the others
that grow out of it, leads at once to the first
most natural and proper step In legal search.
What was the exact condition and appearance
of that room and It's contents at the moment of
discovery by the police? How far were those
appearances modified, and when and by


whom, and at whose order or request ?
| What has become of the objects removed, and
what is their present conditionp When these
points shall have been satisfactorily covered
there are others that will Immediately sue
ceed them. The place, the exact scene of the


murder, is haunted by the crime. The Coro-
ner's jury and the officers Of the law may sit
elsewhere; but the finger of justice points to


that silent room and blood-stained carpet. No


confusion dwells in the mute yet eloquent en-


closure of those four walls. The outside din


Of the busy day and the brooding loneliness Of
| night cannot choke down or becloud the testi-
mony that Is there for eyes that have skilled
| sight and ears that are willing to hear.