ined
to go to a wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in wait
for the couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill the
escort. After spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for a
full year, he at last attempted its execution--that is, attempted to
disfigure the young woman. It was a success. It was permanent. In
trying to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper-table with her
parents and brothers and sisters) in such a manner as to mar its
comeliness, one of his bullets wandered a little out of the course, and
she dropped dead. To the very last moment of his life he bewailed the
ill luck that made her move her face just at the critical moment. And so
he died, apparently about half persuaded that somehow it was chiefly her
own fault that she got killed. This idiot was hanged. The plea, of
insanity was not offered.

Insanity certainly is on the increase in the world, and crime is dying
out. There are no longer any murders--none worth mentioning, at any
rate. Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were
insane--but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a mate, it is
evidence that you are a lunatic. In these days, too, if a person of good
family and high social standing steals anything, they call it
kleptomania, and send him to the lunatic asylum. If a person of high
standing squanders his fortune in dissipation, and closes his career with
strychnine or a bullet, "Temporary Aberration" is what was the trouble
with him.

Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common
that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal
case that comes before the courts? And is it not so cheap, and so
common, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles in derision when the
newspaper mentions it?

And is it not curious to note how very often it wins acquittal for the
prisoner? Of late years it does not seem possible for a man to so
conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be manifestly
insane. If he talks about the stars, he is insane. If he appears
nervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane. If he weeps
over a great grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that he is
"not right." If, an hour after the murder, he seems ill at ease,
preoccupied, and excited, he is, unquestionably insane.

Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against
insanity. There is wh