FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2152   2153   2154   2155   2156   2157   2158   2159   2160   2161   2162   2163   2164   2165   2166   2167   2168   2169   2170   2171   2172   2173   2174   2175   2176  
2177   2178   2179   2180   2181   2182   2183   2184   2185   2186   2187   2188   2189   2190   2191   2192   2193   2194   2195   2196   2197   2198   2199   2200   2201   >>   >|  
About fifty of those lines, as one perceives, deal with local matters; so the reporters are not overworked. Exactly one-half of the second page is occupied with an opera criticism, fifty-three lines (three of them being headlines), and "Death Notices," ten lines. The other half of the second page is made up of two paragraphs under the head of "Miscellaneous News." One of these paragraphs tells about a quarrel between the Czar of Russia and his eldest son, twenty-one and a half lines; and the other tells about the atrocious destruction of a peasant child by its parents, forty lines, or one-fifth of the total of the reading-matter contained in the paper. Consider what a fifth part of the reading-matter of an American daily paper issued in a city of one hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants amounts to! Think what a mass it is. Would any one suppose I could so snugly tuck away such a mass in a chapter of this book that it would be difficult to find it again in the reader lost his place? Surely not. I will translate that child-murder word for word, to give the reader a realizing sense of what a fifth part of the reading-matter of a Munich daily actually is when it comes under measurement of the eye: "From Oberkreuzberg, January 21st, the DONAU ZEITUNG receives a long account of a crime, which we shortened as follows: In Rametuach, a village near Eppenschlag, lived a young married couple with two children, one of which, a boy aged five, was born three years before the marriage. For this reason, and also because a relative at Iggensbach had bequeathed M400 ($100) to the boy, the heartless father considered him in the way; so the unnatural parents determined to sacrifice him in the cruelest possible manner. They proceeded to starve him slowly to death, meantime frightfully maltreating him--as the village people now make known, when it is too late. The boy was shut in a hole, and when people passed by he cried, and implored them to give him bread. His long-continued tortures and deprivations destroyed him at last, on the third of January. The sudden (sic) death of the child created suspicion, the more so as the body was immediately clothed and laid upon the bier. Therefore the coroner gave notice, and an inquest was held on the 6th. What a pitiful spectacle was disclosed then! The body was a complete skeleton. The stomach and intestines were utterly empty; they contained nothing whatsoever. The flesh on
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2152   2153   2154   2155   2156   2157   2158   2159   2160   2161   2162   2163   2164   2165   2166   2167   2168   2169   2170   2171   2172   2173   2174   2175   2176  
2177   2178   2179   2180   2181   2182   2183   2184   2185   2186   2187   2188   2189   2190   2191   2192   2193   2194   2195   2196   2197   2198   2199   2200   2201   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

reading

 

matter

 
contained
 

parents

 

January

 

village

 

reader

 

people

 

paragraphs

 

skeleton


heartless

 

stomach

 

father

 

considered

 

unnatural

 

manner

 
proceeded
 

starve

 

slowly

 

complete


determined

 

sacrifice

 

cruelest

 

Iggensbach

 
couple
 

children

 

utterly

 
marriage
 

relative

 
intestines

reason
 
bequeathed
 

maltreating

 

coroner

 

Therefore

 

destroyed

 

deprivations

 
tortures
 
inquest
 

married


notice

 
immediately
 
clothed
 

suspicion

 

sudden

 

created

 
continued
 

whatsoever

 

pitiful

 

meantime