sband and father."

"She was brutally repulsed."

"But Strachan, the monster of Shelby county, whom the angel a few months
afterward smote with Herodian rottenness--Strachan, whose flesh literally
fell from his living skeleton--Strachan, who has long been paying in the
deepest, blackest, hottest hole in perdition the penalty of his forty-ply
damnation-deserving crimes was provost marshal."

"He saw the frantic agony of the woman; called her into his office and
told her he would save her husband if she would give him three hundred
dollars and then submit--but oh! humanity shudders, sickens at the horrid
proposal."

"The wretched, half-crazed, agonized wife, not knowing what she
did--acceded to save her husband's life--and the next morning she was found
lying insane and nearly dead, with her baby at her breast, near the public
spring at Palmyra."

"And after all this, her husband was only released on condition that
another should be shot in his place."

"Young Smith was selected."

"And then ensued a contest without a parallel in all the six thousand
years of human history."

"Humphrey refused to let any man die in his stead, declaring he should
feel himself a murderer if he did."

"Smith protested that he was only a poor orphan boy, and so far as he knew
there was not a soul on earth to grieve for him; that Humphrey had a large
family entirely dependent upon him for daily bread, and it was his duty to
live while he could."

"And Smith, the simple country lad, only seventeen years old, the Hero
without a peer on all Fame's mighty scroll, took his seat on a rough
box--and was shot!"

"Will not God eternally damn his murderers?"

"We might dwell for hours on the incidents connected with this most
frightful butchery of ancient or modern ages."

"But why go on?"

"The murder was done!"

"The Confederate government talked of demanding the murderer McNeil."

"Then a 'memorial' was gotten up, and signed by two thousand Missourians,
recommending the heaven-earth-and-hell-accursed old monster, on account of
his Palmyra massacre, to special favor and he was promoted to a
brigadier-generalship."

14. LAWRENCE

Disguised as a cattle trader, Lieutenant Fletcher Taylor, now a prominent
and wealthy citizen of Joplin, Mo., spent a week at the Eldridge house in
Lawrence, Kansas, from which place had gone out the Jayhawkers who in
three months just previous had slain 200 men and boys, taken many women
pri