gton is not Corinth, and Lais,
the beautiful daughter of Timandra, might not have been the
prototype of the ravishing Laura, daughter of the plebeian house of
Hawkins; but the orators add statesmen who were the purchasers of
the favors of the one, may have been as incorruptible as the
Republican statesmen who learned how to love and how to vote from
the sweet lips of the Washington lobbyist; and perhaps the modern
Lais would never have departed from the national Capital if there
had been there even one republican Xenocrates who resisted her
blandishments. But here the parallel: fails. Lais, wandering away
with the youth Rippostratus, is slain by the women who are jealous
of her charms. Laura, straying into her Thessaly with the youth
Brierly, slays her other lover and becomes the champion of the
wrongs of her sex.

Another journal began its editorial with less lyrical beauty, but with
equal force. It closed as follows:--

With Laura Hawkins, fair, fascinating and fatal, and with the
dissolute Colonel of a lost cause, who has reaped the harvest he
sowed, we have nothing to do. But as the curtain rises on this
awful tragedy, we catch a glimpse of the society at the capital
under this Administration, which we cannot contemplate without alarm
for the fate of the Republic.

A third newspaper took up the subject in a different tone. It said:--

Our repeated predictions are verified. The pernicious doctrines
which we have announced as prevailing in American society have been
again illustrated. The name of the city is becoming a reproach.
We may have done something in averting its ruin in our resolute
exposure of the Great Frauds; we shall not be deterred from
insisting that the outraged laws for the protection of human life
shall be vindicated now, so that a person can walk the streets or
enter the public houses, at least in the day-time, without the risk
of a bullet through his brain.

A fourth journal began its remarks as follows:--

The fullness with which we present our readers this morning the
details of the Selby-Hawkins homicide is a miracle of modern
journalism. Subsequent investigation can do little to fill out the
picture. It is the old story. A beautiful woman shoots her
absconding lover in cold-blood; and we shall doubtless learn in due