er murderer, lies dead at the morgue. They
were to have been married to-day."

From to-day's paper I quote the above introduction to a column
murder-sensation in simple life. Simple it was, and elemental--the man
loving steadily and doggedly and madly, after the manner of the male
before possession; the woman fluttering, and teasing, and tantalising,
after the manner of the female courting possession. They had been
engaged for some time. The woman loved the man and fully intended to
marry him. The engagement neared its close, and on the day before that
of the wedding, the man, slow minded, loving intensely, procured the
marriage licence. The woman read the document, and with the last coy
flutter before surrender told him that she would not marry him.

"I meant it as a jest," she said as she lay on a cot at the receiving
hospital; but four bullets were in her body, and Charles J. Johnson,
clumsy and natural lover, lay dead in an adjoining room with the fifth
bullet in his brain.

In this pitiful little tragedy appear two of the most salient
characteristics of love; namely, madness and selfishness. Let us analyze
Charles J. Johnson's condition. He was a lineman for a telegraph
company, healthy and strong, used to open-air life and hard work. He had
steady employment and good wages. Can't you see the man, content with a
good digestion, unailing body, and mild pleasures, and enjoying life
with bovine placidity? But pretty Louisa Naveret entered his life. The
"abysmal fecundity" was stirred and life clamoured to be created.
Peacefulness and content vanished. All the forces of his existence
impelled him to seize upon and possess "nineteen-year-old" Louisa
Naveret. He was afflicted with a disorder of mind and body, a madness
so great, a delusion so powerful, a pain and unrest so pressing, that
the possession of that particular "nineteen-year-old" woman became the
dearest thing in the world, dearer than life itself and more potent than
the "will to live."

I do well to call love a madness. Any departure from rationality is
madness, and for a man of Charles J. Johnson's calibre, suicide is an
extremely irrational act. But he also killed Louisa Naveret, wherein he
was as selfish as he was mad. Convinced that he was not to possess her,
he was determined that no other man should possess her.

While on this matter of love considered as a disorder of mind and body,
I recall a recent magazine article of Mr. Finck's, in which he a