wrist. Near her lay
the ax with which the murderous deed had been committed. In one of
the bedrooms six of the children were found, one in bed and the
others scattered about the floor. They were all dead. Their brains had
evidently been dashed out with a club, and every mark about them seemed
to have been made with a blunt instrument. The children must have
struggled hard for their lives, as articles of clothing and broken
furniture were strewn about the room in the utmost confusion. Julia
and Emma, aged respectively fourteen and seventeen, were found in the
kitchen, bruised and insensible, but it is thought their recovery is
possible. The eldest girl, Mary, must have sought refuge, in her terror,
in the garret, as her body was found there frightfully mutilated, and
the knife with which her wounds had been inflicted still sticking in her
side. The two girls Julia and Emma, who had recovered sufficiently to be
able to talk yesterday morning, declare that their father knocked them
down with a billet of wood and stamped on them. They think they were the
first attacked. They further state that Hopkins had shown evidence
of derangement all day, but had exhibited no violence. He flew into a
passion and attempted to murder them because they advised him to go to
bed and compose his mind.

Curry says Hopkins was about forty-two years of age, and a native of
western Pennsylvania; he was always affable and polite, and until very
recently no one had ever heard of his ill-treating his family. He had
been a heavy owner in the best mines of Virginia and Gold Hill, but when
the San Francisco papers exposed our game of cooking dividends in order
to bolster up our stocks he grew afraid and sold out, and invested an
immense amount in the Spring Valley Water Company, of San Francisco. He
was advised to do this by a relative of his, one of the editors of
the San Francisco Bulletin, who had suffered pecuniarily by the
dividend-cooking system as applied to the Daney Mining Company recently.
Hopkins had not long ceased to own in the various claims on the Comstock
lead, however, when several dividends were cooked on his newly acquired
property, their water totally dried up, and Spring Valley stock went
down to nothing. It is presumed that this misfortune drove him mad, and
resulted in his killing himself and the greater portion of his family.
The newspapers of San Francisco permitted this water company to go on
borrowing money and cooking divid