Crime Library - Closing Knowlton, Part 3

But there are some things that are pregnant. My distinguished friend tells of the frequency of presentiments. They are frequent in the storybooks, Mr. Foreman. If they occur in real life they are usually thought of afterwards. Did you ever hear one expressed beforehand? She goes to her friend the evening before, this friend of hers in whom she confided, and prepared her for something dreadful. As my associate has expressed it, more tersely and more exactly than I could by any words, she catalogued the defences she would have to make. She said she felt something was hanging over her. What did it mean? What did it mean? Sometimes we feel that way, but we seldom say so; and if we say so, the something hanging over does not happen. All the disasters of your life, Mr. Foreman, all the things that ever came with crushing weight upon the happiness of your life, came like a flash of lightning out of the clear sky. Today you are happy; tomorrow you are plunged in grief. You do not know it beforehand, you do not think of it beforehand, you do not speak of it beforehand. I do not attach the utmost significance to that thing, but it is one of these little chips that may float in the current, or may float in the eddy, as you look at it one way or the other.

But I come rapidly from that to what does strike one as exceedingly remarkable. Do you remember how that strong man, Charles S. Sawyer, betrayed the qualms of fear that agitated him as he was stationed at that screen door after the officers had come, after the women were in the house, after he was secure in the presence of the world? He, man that he was, could not bear to stand in that hallway without bolting the cellar door, and sometimes even coming out upon the steps for fear that this assassin might come down those back stairs. We laughed at it a little, we thought it was somewhat ridiculous. But put yourself in his place, Mr. Foreman, and see how you would feel. Lizzie tells us that she came into that sitting room and found that foul murder had been done almost within the flash of an eye. She could not know that the assassin was not there. She could not know that he had escaped. She was surrounded by kind and sympathizing neighbors---Mrs. Churchill in her house across the way, within reach of her voice, and all the household that belonged thereto; Mrs. Kelly, a lady, as you saw the other day, on the other side of her. A single cry would have alarmed that street and brought crowds to her assistance. And yet I find, you find, that after the discovery of what would send the most abject terror to any one of you that I am talking to, she never left that house; she never even went out on the steps; she stood there beside the screen door, inside the screen door, and calmly summoned her picked and chosen friends---first her intimate friend, the physician across the street,---what on earth she wanted a doctor for I cannot imagine, because there was the dead body of the man, and she told Maggie that he was dead,---and when it was found that Bowen was not there, not Mrs. Churchill, not Mrs. Kelly, not any passer by who could have come to her assistance, but the only sign of recognition of the public she made in this matter was to send Bridget down two squares to the very woman to whom she had been predicting this thing the night before. And did it occur to you before I said it---perhaps it did: jurymen sometimes see much deeper than counsel think they do---did it occur to you before, gentlemen, that the public never knew of this thing except by accident? Mrs. Churchill came in from her visit to the market, saw Bridget running across the street, looked out of the window, saw Lizzie in agitation, raised the window and asked her what the matter was; and then murder was out. How long it would have been before the police authorities would have discovered this thing but for the vigilant eye of Mrs. Churchill, no human being knows. No cry was made, no escape from the house was made, no thought of danger was suggested, but we have the calm and quiet demeanor of a woman contrasted with the agitation of a man in the same position within fifteen minutes afterwards when he was surrounded by those who could assure his safety. I do not care to allude to the visit to the cellar; I do not care to allude to her remarkable coolness of demeanor to the officers in the afternoon. She is certainly a remarkable woman: she is certainly a remarkable woman. Some people may share with me in that dread of going down below the stairs into the somewhat damp and gloomy recesses of the cellar after dark. I should not want to confess myself timid, but there have been times when I did not like to do it. And all the use I propose to make of that incident is to emphasize from it the almost stoical nerve of a woman, who, when her friend, not the daughter nor the stepdaughter of these murdered people, but her friend,---could not bear to go into the room where those clothes were, should have the nerve to go down there alone, alone, and calmly enter the room for some purpose that I do not (know) what connection it had with this case.

Tell me that this woman was physically incapable of that deed? My distinguished friend has not read female character enough to know that when a woman dares, she dares, and when she will, she will, and that, given a woman that has that absolute command of herself, who told Mrs. Reagan, even, that the failure to break that egg was the first time she had ever failed in anything she undertook,---a woman whose courage surpasses that of any man I am talking to, I verily and humbly believe,---tell me that she is physically incapable of this act?

But those are trifles, Mr. Foreman, those are trifles. Those are little chips that do not perhaps directly indicate which way the current flows. But there is more in the case than that.

Of course the question arises to everyone's lips, How could she have avoided the spattering of her dress with blood if she was the author of these crimes, as to the first crime it is scarcely necessary to attempt to answer the question. In the solitude of that house with ample fire in the stove, with ample wit of woman nobody has suggested that as to the first crime there was ample opportunity, ample means and that nothing can be suggested as a reason why all the evidence of that crime could not have been amply and successfully concealed. I dwell no more upon that. But as to the second murder, the question is one of more difficulty. I cannot answer it. You cannot answer it. You are neither murderers nor women. You have neither the craft of the assassin nor the cunning and deftness of the sex. There are some things however in the case that we know, and one of them is, and perhaps one of the pregnant facts in this case is that when the officers had completed their search and in good faith had asked her to produce the dress she was wearing that morning they were fooled with that garment which lies on that trunk, which was not upon her when any human being saw her. That is a pretty bold assertion. Let us see what the evidence of it is, because as to that matter the evidence is contradictory, and it is the first proposition, I believe, that I have addressed to you touching which there is even an attempt to show contradictory evidence. Up to this time I have traveled in the path of unchallenged facts. Bear that in mind. I have tred on ground on which no attempt has been made to block the ordinary course of reasoning, and I now approach the first subject in which there is any attempt to show contradiction, and it turns out to be no contradiction whatever. This dress has been described to you as a silk dress and dark blue evidently, a dress with a figure which is not at all like a diamond, a dress which is not a cheap dress, a dress which would not be worn in ironing by any prudent woman. Of course not. It is an afternoon dress. Do your wives dress in silk when they go down in the kitchen to work, and in their household duties in the morning, before dinner? But I am not compelled to stay at suppositions of reasonings. I come to facts. There was one woman in this world who saw Lizzie Borden after these murders were done and who when she saw her did not suspect that murder had been done. Who was that? It was that clear eyed, intelligent, honest daughter of one of Fall River's most honored citizens, Adelaide Churchill. Everybody else saw her when they knew that murder had been done. Addie Churchill saw her when the most she suspected was that somebody had become sick again. She saw Bridget going for the Doctor and she looked across the yard, and saw Lizzie by the door in agitation. She thought some one was sick and raised the window and inquired, and she is the only woman in the case who saw Lizzie when she was completely out of the suspicion of the excitement of murder. She describes the dress she had on that morning. I will read it word for word to you because it is vital.

"Q. Will you describe the dress that she had on while you were there?

A. It looked like a light blue and white ground work; it seemed like calico or cambric, and it had a light blue and white ground work with a dark navy blue diamond printed on it.

Q. Was the whole dress alike, the skirt and waist?

A. It looked so to me.

Q. Was that the dress she had on this morning? (showing dark blue dress)."

She did not want to harm a hair of Lizzie's head. She was her neighbor and her friend, and she would avoid it if she could. But she answers: "it does not look like it." Mr. Moody puts it again: "Was it? Was it?" Ah, Addie Churchill will have to give an answer which will convict this woman with putting up a dress which is not the one she wore. She is no police detective conspiring against her life, but her next door neighbor, her friend then and her friend today. When Mr. Moody puts the straight question to her, "Was it?" she answers, "that is not the dress I have described." Still it is not quite close enough; my learned friend wants it answered more closely and asks: "Was it the dress she had on?" Mrs. Churchill can avoid answering no longer and she says:

"I did not see her with it on that morning." She further describes the dress as having the ground work of a color "like blue and white mixed, blended." And Mrs. Churchill was shown that dress by my learned friend who opened the case for the defendant, within a day or two, I presume after the occurrence, or as soon as it was put in his hands, it is not material which. What she told him I do not know and do not care. It was called to her attention at once and she is compelled to say that she did not see Miss Lizzie wear that dress that morning. It is not the testimony of one who wants her convicted. I may well believe, I am glad to believe, although I know nothing of it, that it is the testimony of one who would rejoice if she were not convicted.

Some little point was made as to whether this dress was a Bedford cord or not. Mrs. Churchill did not know a Bedford cord, some women do not, but she did know it was a cheap cotton or calico dress. Officer Doherty, whose testimony I do not attach much importance to, but whose testimony I will allude to, said "I thought it a light blue dress with the bosom in the waist," whatever that may mean, and on being shown the dress he was asked, "if that is the dress," and he says "no, I don't think it was." My distinguished friend tries to turn it into a faint recollection, and he adroitly puts a question to him which is answered by the officer that he has only a faint recollection that it was a light blue dress. The next question is "but it is only a faint recollection?" And Doherty responds, "well, I am confident it was not a dark nor as full of blue as that." (alluding to this dress). I do not attach much weight to that. Men have only a general idea of such subjects.

Now comes another witness who, I believe would cut his heart strings before he would say a word against that woman if he could help it, and that is her physician and friend, Dr. Seabury W. Bowen, who away back in the early stages of this case gave testimony, and the testimony is all the more valuable because it comes from her intimate friend, and was given at a time when it was not supposed there was ever to be any discussion about it. He undertakes to describe the dress:

"Q. Do you recall how Lizzie was dressed that morning?

A. It is pretty hard work for me. Probably if I could see a dress something like it, I could guess, but I could not describe it; it was a sort of drab, not much color to it to attract my attention,---a sort of morning calico dress, I should judge." Not a bad description for a man and one that hits so near the mark that Mrs. Raymond, who was called by the defence, said that when she read Dr. Bowen's testimony she thought that the Bedford cord was undoubtedly the dress he had in mind for he came so near describing it. We wanted to know whether he would modify that at all and he answered by saying that he would modify it 'merely by saying that the drab,---there are very many shades of drab to a woman's dress, I should judge.' He had said "if I could see a dress something like it, I could guess." My associate takes the suggestion, holds that dress up to Dr. Bowen to see if he is color blind and says, What do you call that, Dr. Bowen? Dr. Bowen replies, I should call that dark blue. Oh, the significance of it, of that unwilling testimony as to the character of that dress! Unwilling testimony, not necessarily or even remotely tending to perjury, but the testimony of one who does not want his friend but whose very words have damned her because he has described a dress that is not in the case. The only person who undertakes to contradict that, the only human being is Mrs. Bowen herself, and when her testimony is considered with reference to all the facts in this case, it is in fact the most significant corroboration of it. She said the other day that it was a dark blue. Witnesses are put on the stand, Mr. Foreman, for you to see them take their oath as well as to testify. It may be that you observed that when Mrs. Bowen raised her hand to take her oath it shook like an aspen leaf. Poor woman, she knew what she had said. She knew she had been describing that dress and I pitied her from the bottom of my heart. But I turn back from Mrs. Bowen appearing in this Court for the defence of this girl to Mrs. Bowen who gave earlier testimony in which she described that dress as a light blue, having a blouse waist of blue material with a white spray on it. That does not mean so much to you and me.

That doesn't mean so much to you and me, not so very much to you and me. But if a carpenter calls a cornice a pilaster, it means a good deal. If a lawyer calls a deed a lease, it means a great deal. It means you don't want to employ him. If a woman calls a circle a spray, she is not a woman.

But she goes further; by what she does not mean to say she says more accurately than anything else.

"What was the body of the dress?" "I didn't notice particularly."

"The ground of the blouse. You say it had a white spray?" "Oh, it was blue."

"Light or dark blue?"

This is away back, you know, before she thought it was important.

"I should say quite a dark shade, I can't tell."

True for you, Mrs. Bowen.

"I wasn't looking for fashions then."

"Do you know what skirt she had on?" "I don't know. It was nothing more than an ordinary morning dress, such as I had seen her wear before."

"Something you had seen her wear frequently before?" "Yes sir."

"In the morning or when?" "In the morning when I have been in."

A morning dress she had on that morning, by the testimony of everybody in this case; and there is not a human being brought forward to say that, up to the time her father and mother were killed, they (n)ever saw her wearing that silk dress before dinner; never.

How does that testimony leave your minds, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen? Mrs. Bowen all at sea, but involuntarily describing it as a dress which was a cheap morning dress. Dr. Bowen, strained to the utmost, he cannot describe it other than as a drab which looked like a light blue; and Mrs. Raymond well put it; and Mrs. Churchill, calm, self-reliant, friendly to the uttermost point of human interest for this poor girl, accurately telling us that that was not the dress.

Do you believe it was the dress? Do you believe that that hot morning in August, the hottest of all that year, that girl would be found in the hottest and the most exhausting occupation that a girl can be engaged in in the morning, ironing, in a silk afternoon dress? Oh, no; oh, no.

That is not all. The morning dress she had worn, she had worn for many times, as Miss Emma is obliged to say. Poor girl! She put it in her testimony---she wanted to help her sister---that it was very early in the morning. Oh, unfortunate expression! Did you ever know a girl to change her dress twice a morning, ever in the world? It was a morning dress. And the day before the tragedy happened, Bridget tells us that that cheap morning dress, light blue with a dark figure, Wednesday morning, the dress she had on was of that description, and it was this very Bedford cord undoubtedly. She never wears it afterwards. Friday she has on this dress. Saturday she has on this dress, mornings and afternoon. It is good enough for her to wear then. Perhaps there isn't any distinction of morning and afternoon then, in that house of the dead. I make no great point of that, but I pass rapidly on, for I fear I am wearying your patience, to one other fact which has not been explained.

We have had evidence of the character of the search that was made in the house. It can perhaps all be well summed up in the suggestion, that the search of Thursday was perfunctory, insufficient and indecisive. It was with no particular, definite aim in view. It was absolutely without any idea that the inmates of the house knew of this crime. It was that sort of a search which goes through and does not see what it ought to see. But it was enough to put them on their guard. There was in that house somewhere a Bedford cord dress. That Bedford cord dress had been stained with paint. I welcome that fact. My learned associate never said it had not been stained with paint. I believe it had. No, I ought not to say that. I hope I may be corrected if I say I believe it at any time. There is no assertion or pretence that it had not been stained with paint. It had not stopped the wearing of it, though. It was good enough for a morning dress, good enough for an ironing dress, good enough for a chore dress around the house in the morning.

But the Thursday's search had put them on their guard, and when, Saturday afternoon, the officers came there, they were prepared for the most absolutely thorough search that could be made in that house. Where was that paint stained Bedford cord? Where was that dress with paint spots on it, so thickly covering it that it wasn't fit to wear any more? Where was it, that the officers didn't see it? Emma alone can tell us, and Emma tries to tell us that it was in that closet. At the fear of wearying you with the tale of facts, because this is a case where I must go into the details, let me read the exact testimony of that accurate Saturday afternoon search. Fleet says:

"Upon the Saturday did you go into the clothes closet in the front hall upstairs?" "I did."

"Did you examine all the dresses you found there?" "We looked at them; yes, sir."

"Did you see either in that closet or in any other closet in the house or anywhere in the house, a dress with marks of paint upon it?" "No, sir."

"How critically, how carefully, were you examining the dresses at that time on the Saturday?" "Very closely."

Of course they were; they were looking for things then.

"Did you find any blood upon any dress? I have asked you about paint. Did you find anything that looked like blood or any discoloration of any kind?" "No, sir."

Ah, but my distinguished friend may say, Fleet cannot be trusted; he is in the conspiracy to fasten guilt upon this woman. But his partner in that search was State Detective Seaver of Taunton, a man who has held the commission from the executive of this Commonwealth for many times repeated, for thirteen or fifteen years; a man out of the reach of all that attaches of suspicion, if there is any, if there ever was any, to the officers of the Fall River police. What does Seaver say? Some of you may know him and know what he means when he is talking. I read again from the testimony.

"Captain Fleet was with me, and I commenced on the hooks and took each dress, with the exception of two or three in the corner, and passed them to Fleet, he being near the window, and he examined them as well as myself, he more carefully than myself. And I took each garment then and hung it back as I found them, all excepting two or three which were heavy or silk dresses in the corner. I didn't discover anything whatever upon any of these dresses. I didn't see any light blue dress with diamond spots and paint around the bottom of it or upon the side."

Men are not critical observers of dresses. I do not claim that. But Officers Fleet and Seaver could see a dress that was so dirty that it had got to be destroyed. And it was not there. It was not found. It was concealed.

And we have another fact, in addition to the burning, that had not appeared when this case began, because we did not know where they pretended it was. It was the dress that Mrs. Raymond made in the spring. It was a cheap morning dress that had become soiled with paint. It had been, however, good enough to wear for mornings during the spring and early summer, and was even worn by her on Wednesday morning before the tragedy. It corresponds to the dress that Mrs. Churchill saw her have on that morning. It corresponds to the description that is wrenched from Dr. Bowen, that dress he saw her have on that morning. It was not seen from that time until Sunday. It was not where the officers could find it on Saturday night. It was concealed.

Am I putting things too strongly, Mr. Foreman? Pardon me if in the heat of this argument I overstate anything. I do not mean to. I mean to be courteous and fair, but I use these words with the full responsibility of what they mean. That dress with paint on it was concealed on Saturday.

Still I have not answered the question, how could it be that it didn't get covered with blood? I cannot answer it. Woman's deftness, the assassin's cunning, is beyond us. There are some things in the case as to which I have not hear(d) any attempt at explanation. In that stove which had been used for heating irons to iron with, there was found a roll of paper. What does that mean? I can think, in my coarse masculine way, I can think of many ways in which the person, the upper part of the person, could have been protected, easily protected, while this thing took place.

Paper would have done it. Burnt paper was found, and no attempt was made to explain it. My distinguished friend raises a man of straw and proceeds to demolish it with hilarity by suggesting that the handle of the hatchet was in that roll of paper. It was the defence that thought of that, not we. It never occurred to us; it was not so. It was a roll of paper that had been burned, and nobody tells us how nor when, which might have been done. Did it ever occur to you---I am only suggesting these things. It is not our business to prove what she did to conceal the blood spots; that is for the defence, not part of our case. We prove the murders. The concealment is a part of the assassin's business. Did it ever occur to you, however, how remarkable it is that the coat which the old man took off, which I presume he took off, at any rate whether that coat or another, instead of being hung upon a nail, as a prudent old man would have hung it, was folded up underneath his cushion? That might have been used. I can't tell. There are plenty of ways in which a woman can conceal that sort of thing.

It was possible---and I do not urge it in the face of this testimony. You may believe it for I understand it is a matter that doctors do not understand more than anybody else---it is very possible that very few blood spots that would be subject to observation would get upon the dress. Although Mr. Manning, the reporter, went into that sitting room to see if there was anything he could find, and if there is anything that a reporter does not see, it is pretty hard to see it, all he saw was a little spot, one on the door, and one spot of blood that had spurted upon the wall by the side of the sofa. The table right by the side never received a drop of blood; the books never received a drop of blood; the carpet never received a drop of blood. Yet, I do not know, the doctors tell me it would be hard work for her not to get spattered, and I do not undertake to say it might not be. The chance might have been taken, but it was not probable. Some attempt might well have been made to cover up that dress. A woman's cunning can devise that. There is no difficulty in that. She had had one experience. She had found how blood spurted from hatchet wounds. She had learned the business, and she knew the thousand and one ways by which that could be done. But Saturday afternoon they came there to search. They went all through that house. Then, not before that time, as my distinguished friend has suggested. Then, after they had been through the house they said to her, "Give us the dress you wore that morning," and we took it away, and it never was worn that morning at all, and is not the dress, and we were fooled and deceived. "Give us the skirt that you wore that morning," and they gave us a skirt, and at once it was discovered, and that is the only use I make of it at all in this case,---at once it was discovered that notwithstanding the precautions, it may be, or by accident, it may be, I do not know which, I make no point of it in connection with this tragedy except this, at once it was discovered and vigilant counsel brought back the information to her, I have no doubt, that on the only skirt she gave up was found a drop of blood, on the outside of the skirt, that had not come there by smearing, but by spattering, and the officers might come again. They had not said they had finished. Our learned friend tried to show that Emma told her so, but she did not say so. She said that all they said was, what Mr. Jennings said to her was that they had searched every box and every barrel, and she said, "Let them come as often as they please." They were coming to search the cellar. The spot of blood might attract their attention. The eye of science through the microscope might well see on that fatal Bedford cord the drops of blood that had not been prevented from going upon it by imperfect concealment; and while the church bells were ringing people to come to divine worship, the morning after she was told that she was suspected, the morning after they had searched and had not found what they had sought, the morning after she probably knew that they had found a spot of blood upon that skirt, she did that fatal thing.

Now, there are two versions of that story, and you must decide between them. It is for you to pass upon this evidence, gentlemen. It is for you to search the truth. It is at the bottom of a well, but you must find it. Emma says that Saturday night she saw that dress upon the hook and said to Lizzie, "You better destroy this dress." And Lizzie said she would. Nobody heard that conversation but Lizzie and Emma, so we cannot contradict those words excepting by what followed. Now mark the exact use of language. Alice Russell said that when she came down stairs that morning she went into the kitchen, and Lizzie stood by the stove with a dress skirt in her hand and a waist on the shelf near by, and Emma turned round and said to her, "Lizzie, what are you going to do? Answer. I am going to burn this old thing up. It is all covered in paint." If that question was put by Emma and that answer was given by Lizzie, there was no such talk Saturday night as Emma has testified to, was there? Because that talk is to the purport that Emma had advised her to do that thing, and had given the reason for it, and she had acquiesced in that advice. Emma says that talk did not take place. She does not put it as a matter of memory. She gives the only really part answer that she gave in all the examination that I made of her, and in which I endeavored to be as courteous as I knew how to be to a lady. She said that talk did not take place because it did not take place. She knew the importance of that talk. She knew how important it was for you to believe that did not take place; but, Mr. Foreman, you have got to believe one of the two. You have got to believe Alice Russell or you have got to believe Emma. I forbear to comment upon the desperate straits that that unfortunate sister, that innocent sister, is put into in this case; but it is my right and privilege to suggest to you, and I do it to the credit of human nature, that this Alice Russell, who, it turns out had a conscience, as they found the next day, who was, and for aught that I know is the friend of this woman to this hour, that all the wealth of Indies could not persuade that woman to twist the inflexion (sic) of a voice against this girl, do you believe she could? You saw her. You judged her. You heard how that testimony was wrenched from her conscience and not from her interest. She said that it was as she said it was, that Emma was the one that was surprised. Alice was speechless at first. Emma was the one that was surprised, the one that now pretends that she advised her to do it. "What are you going to do, Lizzie?" It was an astonishing thing, on Sunday morning. That dress had been good enough to keep through May, through June, through July, through the first weeks in August. It was a singular thing that of all times in the world it should be selected on the Lord's day to destroy a dress which had been concealed from the search of the officers made the afternoon before and within twelve hours of the time that Lizzie was told that formal accusation was being made against her. It was an astonishing thing, and well may Emma have asked her what she was doing. She would not have asked it if she had advised it to be done. Lizzie would not have thought it necessary to explain it if she had acquiesced in that advice. She asks it as though she had not heard of it before, and Lizzie gives the explanation as though it had never occurred to Emma before, "It is all covered in paint. I am going to burn the old thing up."

Ah, gentlemen, search your consciences and tell me which of those two women you think is entitled to credence. Some point was made in the testimony, not by my distinguished friend in the argument, to his credit be it said, about what occurred the next day. Oh, what a dreadful thing a conscience is! What a master conscience is! How it drives us to the path of duty, unwilling though we may be. That stern Puritan conscience of Alice Russell, friend and confidante of that family as she was, could not brook even the telling of a falsehood to their own hired detective, and she came to these girls, I presume with tears in her eyes, with anxiety in her heart, and says, "Oh, Lizzie, Oh, Lizzie, the burning of that dress I am afraid is the worst thing you could do. Mr. Hanscom has asked me about it." I do not know as the conversation followed exactly in this order, "and I first told him you did not, and I have told a lie, and it must be corrected." So she came to them. She was loyal to them, but she was loyal to the God within her soul, and all that Emma pretends to say about it is that it was decided, of course it was, they knew that conscience had decided it already, that the incident must be told and it was told. To whom? To anybody in the world excepting this mysterious Hanscom who came into this case on Sunday morning and has gone we know not whither. There was the servant, their own employee. It was never disclosed until the conscience of Alice Russell pursued her and compelled it to be made public to the world. Oh, gentlemen, it was a dreadful thing. It is not that there was paint on it; there was; it is not that it was burned up: it is not that Lizzie Borden destroyed it. It is that she should keep that dress and wear it, should think it was good enough for May and June and July: should wear it on Wednesday, should wear it on Thursday, if you believe Mrs. Churchill and Dr. Bowen. She concealed it upon Saturday and she was told that she was charged with the crime on Saturday night, and of all times in the world she committed it to the flames on Sunday morning.

In all criminal cases, Mr. Foreman, in all cases that you are called upon to try, destruction of evidence is regarded as of the utmost significance. It has occurred to me to suggest that in the house where these people were found dead there were two human beings, Bridget and Lizzie, and of those two human beings there has never appeared, so far as we know in this case, one single incriminating fact against Bridget to connect her with this transaction. She is as clean and pure and white as snow. There is scarcely a fact that is not incriminating against Lizzie. One is poor and friendless, a domestic, a servant, uneducated and without friends, and the other is buttressed by all that social rank and wealth and friends and counsel can do for her protection, but, gentlemen, it is my pride that I am a member of a bar, an officer of a court, the seal of the highest bench of which is, "To no man we deny, to no man do we sell justice." When this court ceases to be, when you, gentlemen, cease to be judges of the rich and of the poor, of the high and of the low, in equal rank and without distinction, then shall I cease to be a member of a court which is so disgraced.

Now, if you please, supposing those things that have been suggested against Lizzie Borden had been found against Bridget Sullivan, poor, friendless girl. Supposing she had told wrong stories; supposing she had put up an impossible alibi; supposing she had put up a dress that never was worn that morning at all, and when the coils were tightening around her had burned a dress up that it should not be seen, what would you think of Bridget? Is there one law for Bridget and another for Lizzie. God forbid.

MASON, C. J. The jury may withdraw with the officers for a recess of five minutes.

(At the conclusion of the recess Mr. Knowlton resumed his argument, speaking as follows:)

The trial of causes before juries, Mr. Foreman, is a feature peculiar in many respects to English speaking countries. It is absolutely necessary in criminal causes, at least, and, except certain specified cases, in civil causes as well, that the witnesses that are to give their evidence shall be brought before you for you to look at them, for you to look in their faces, for you to hear them answer the questions that are put to them, for you to hear them sustain the test of cross examination, which is, as it ought to be, and as I trust it has been, in this cause,---so far as I can observe it has been,---conducted for the purpose merely and only of testing the truth and fairness and honesty of the witness. Of course there are other tests of a witness's honesty, but to men who have been accustomed to look into the faces of men and women and to read faces and to read character, there is no better test. I say this, Mr. Foreman, because I am not quite willing to dismiss the conduct of Miss Lizzie Borden in the guard room of the police station in so supercilious and satirical a manner as my distinguished friend. There is more to it than that. Mrs. Reagan has come on to the stand and has told upon her oath against a woman who is her friend for a brief period, with whom she had no difficulties and who is of her sex and against whom she can have no object of resentment or hatred so as to induce her to commit the foulest of crimes,---has told a story which is extremely significant. I should have hesitated to express myself as to its significance were it not for the attestation of that fact by the agitation, the hurrying and scurrying, the extraordinary efforts put forth by her friends, as soon as it was unadvisedly published to suppress it and deny it. They saw its significance; they are unwilling witnesses to the character of the story and to the way it bears upon this case. That thing took place. Mrs. Reagan has appeared before you, and you are to judge whether you like her looks or not. You are to be the judges of her evidence. And if a man strong in the fortifications of truth comes forward and tells his story, and you like his looks, you have got to believe him.

The thing happened. Then, as sometimes also happens, and, as has happened more than once in this case, as all the gentlemen with whom I am associated unfortunately can bear witness, including myself, a wily reporter, under some guise or other, extracts the facts and publishes them for a sensation in his newspaper the next day. It was an ill-advised thing for Mrs. Reagan to do. It was an unfortunate thing for her to do. She would not probably have given it to Mr. Porter if she had any idea that he was going to publish it. But it was done. And I have no question in saying, I am frank enough to say, that when that was done, and by anxious and excited friends it was brought to her attention how much damage she had done to the woman in her charge, that she proceeded in many and divers ways to give the assurance that it was not so. But that was out of the kindness of her heart and not the malice of it. It was because she wanted not to injure this girl; not because she wanted to injure her. It is extremely significant, and I call your attention to it because I am not willing to let an honest woman go by with a slur such as my distinguished friend in courteous words imposed upon her. It is an extremely significant thing that as soon as that interview, which was between Mrs. Reagan and Miss Emma and Miss Lizzie, was published in the paper, the friendly and, I may say without impertinence, the officious Mr. Holmes, the friendly and interested Mr. Buck---who, by the way, is not called to tell what he told Mrs. Reagan---the friendly Mrs. Holmes, the friendly Miss Brigham, indeed, all the buzzing and excited and eager and anxious crowd of friends came round in troops to harass Mrs. Reagan into taking it back. Miss Emma who knew what took place, Miss Lizzie who knew what took place, never came to Mrs. Reagan and said, "You have told a lie." They were the ones to have denied it. They were the ones to have asked her to take it back. Miss Emma was in there the next day after the publication and she never found it in her heart to say to Mrs. Reagan, "Why, Mrs. Reagan, you have published an infamous and wicked lie about us." It was these same self constituted friends who have filled the newspapers with denunciations of delay in a trial of this cause because the appointed officer was lying sick at his home and could not attend to it, when the courteous and accomplished gentleman who had her interests in charge, my learned friends, never complained and do not to this day complain, to their credit be it said. It was not Miss Emma that said, "That story is false, Mrs. Reagan." It was not Miss Lizzie who said, "That story is false, Mrs. Reagan." They alone knew. But officious reporters---if you had any experience in this case you know how officious they are: I criticize them not; the public was hungry and thirsty for all sorts of news, good, bad or indifferent, and they do only what you or I would have to do if we were hustled on by enterprising publishers,---enterprising and officious reporters, interested and officious friends made her take it back, but not under oath ever. To please Lizzie to please Emma, to please these people, she was willing to sign that certificate. They have called it affidavit, but it was not; it was a certificate. But she went down to Mr. Hilliard (and he) said to her---what? Just what an honorable man ought to have said, just what you would have said, Mr. Foreman, if you had been chief of police. "Mrs. Reagan, if you sign that paper you sign it against my express orders. What you have to say in this case you will say only in Court under your oath."

That is right. That is right. She has done it. She has done it. And against this waiting (?) and excited crowd who came to her in the corridors, when the very air was charged with electricity, when nobody had their sober ???, when Mr. Buck came to her and said things that we do not know how powerful and convincing they were because he has not come to tell us,---weak and accommodating as she was, she had struck a dagger into the peace of this family, she would do anything to make peace there, as many a man and woman has done before. That is one thing, Mr. Foreman. The oath of God is another. It is not vital to this case, but it is not to be dismissed in any such way as that. Mrs. Reagan is here upon her looks, her appearance, her fairness, her honesty, and she is to be judged like any other witness.

My distinguished friend has seen fit to make some humorous comments upon the various hatchets that have been produced in the case. Let me say at the outset, Mr. Foreman, that the production is no part of the Commonwealth's case. We do not undertake to prove that this crime was done with this instrument or that instrument. We do not undertake to assert where the weapon was concealed, nor how it was concealed, nor what it was. We have a duty to perform, and that is to produce before you everything bearing upon this case for or against this girl that has come to our possession or knowledge. A persecuting officer, a policeman, would be false to the high duty imposed upon him in a criminal case if he did not lay before the jury all that he knew that he thought was honest and true, whether it be for her or against her.

Now let me review; and what I have to say about the instrument with which it was done having no relation to the proof of the Commonwealth's case. It has relation to this: it has been suggested, and with more or less force---perhaps it may have impressed some of you---that if that crime was done by somebody within the house, although she might burn a dress, although she might conceal the blood spots, although she might do many things to hide perishable articles, a hatchet must be within the walls of that house unless it was carried out by some accessory after the fact. And the latter proposition is very difficult to believe. Out of all the interested people in this case, let me say once for all that I know of no one who is capable of doing it that has been produced here as a witness in the case. And I do not urge it upon your serious consideration as worthy of a serious argument. But it is a fact that some weight must be attached to the suggestion that if the crime was done by one within the house, the hatchet that did it could not have been destroyed, and in all probability must be in existence. Not necessarily. That house was known to Lizzie Borden: how much do we know about it? The recesses and mysteries of that house are all within her twenty years acquaintance of it. How little can anyone else know of it. But still a search was made, as thorough as officers knew how to make it, and we have produced before you the results. When they went down cellar that afternoon and were directed by Bridget to the box where the hatchets were kept, they found there this hatchet. (Holding up claw hammer hatchet) An examination of it made at that time disclosed not merely---let me now do justice to these men in Fall River, for they have been most cruelly maligned,---and I am not now referring to my distinguished friend upon the other side, although he shared in a milder degree and with more courtesy in what has been said; not merely the officers in Fall River, not merely the medical examiner of that district, but the keen-eyed Professor Wood from Boston, when he saw it in Fall River, saw on it what appeared to him and them to be spots of blood upon the blade and upon the handle and what appeared to be pieces of hair in the interstices of the handle and clotted in the spots of rust upon the blade. It was their duty to take that hatchet. Nay, more; in their eagerness to reach the true result, the officers thought they had the very hatchet, and inconsiderate as they were they let everything else go by. If there are any more Borden murders they won't leave anything undone or untouched; but we don't learn these things until it is too late to be of any use to us. They found a hatchet stained with blood. They found a handle with hairs on it. They saw in that box a handleless hatchet, an old rusty head which they did not examine; an old rusty instrument, which in its then condition could not have done the work, and they attached no importance to it.

The hatchet was sent to Professor Wood for his examination, and it was produced in the trial at the District Court. It is not true, and my learned friend did not mean to say so, if he did say so---I don't know as I understood him---it is not true that Lizzie was adjudged probably guilty because of that hatchet. It was in spite of it. Because at that very Court Professor Wood came there and said, "that hatchet is innocent of blood, that hatchet has no hairs upon it of a human being; that hatchet could not have been cleaned because of the peculiar construction where it goes into the head." Nay, more, Mr. Foreman, mark the significance, mark the exactness of science ---and if falsely and maliciously or inconsiderately and upon imperfect examination it had been said at the last, as it was said at the first, that those spots were spots of blood and those hairs were the hairs of Andrew Borden, still science had another answer to make, and the examination of the physicians who measured and discussed and probed and fitted the wounds in that skull would still have said, "That is not the hatchet; it could not have inflicted the wounds, it is a 4-12-inch hatchet, and could not have inflicted the wounds." And so the very skulls, upon which some comment has been made because they were examined and put into this case as a part of these facts, might still have been the salvation of this defendant if that had been all there was to it. Evidence is evidence, whether it bears one way or the other, and the very skull of her mother might have been, if there had been false evidence about this blood and hair---might have been her triumphant acquittal if it had been charged that that was the instrument with which it was done. It turned out that that was all wrong, that that was all innocent, that there was nothing to it. We are not proving the hatchet, mind you; we are discovering all there is. That is all. We are discovering all there is. That afternoon that Fleet and Mullaly searched that box, the very box where these hatchets were found---the very box, mind you, where these hatchets were found, they found in there a small hatchet head, which obviously---obviously at first inspection would disclose nothing suspicious whatever. Any one seeing that at first sight, as it was then, covered with dirt of ashes, would have said. "There is nothing to it." The discrepancy between the testimony of Fleet and Mullaly I do not pretend to explain. It was as much of a surprise to me, as I manifested---therefore I have a right to say it---otherwise I should not---and I said so frankly at the time, as it was to the counsel for the defence. I don't understand it now; I don't attempt to explain it. All I say is that whichever is right, it makes no difference to the case. If Mullaly saw a handle, it was left in the house where the defendant lived and has never been seen since. If Fleet was right it never was in the box and therefore was never in the case. But they both saw that hatchet. The next Saturday Officer Seaver of the State District Police went down there and saw that hatchet. He did not attach importance to it. The next Monday, Officer Desmond, a very clean cut, slow-spoken, careful, deliberate man---you saw him on the stand---saw that hatchet and was cool enough to know that that ought to be taken down to the station for what it was worth. It was a cutting instrument, and a broken cutting instrument at that. So it was taken down. There isn't anything got up about it. Gentlemen of the jury, do you imagine for a moment, conceding that Fleet and Mullaly and Seaver and Desmond and Medley conspired to lug into the case a hatchet that was faked---if I may use a vulgar word---that they could have had the extraordinary luck to have produced a hatchet which when applied to those wounds by the hand of science was found to fit them exactly? Oh, no. Oh, no. My learned and distinguished associate never suggested it. You will not think of it a moment. They took that hatchet to the police station. It lay there unnoticed, because they supposed---they had a right to suppose---Professor Wood had told them, Dr. Dolan had told them, their own eyes had told them that there was in the hands of the expert in Boston a hatchet covered with blood and hairs. And so this remained there. But the first hatchet came down from Boston, and we produced the evidence that one hatchet was out of the case. Then Hilliard said, of course, as it was the business of an honest and impartial detective, "See what about this hatchet; take it down." And Professor Wood took it down and examined it and has reported to you the results.

Now let me, even at the expense of being a little tedious, get into this matter. I hope you will pardon me. You are in no more of a hurry to get through this case than I am and you are no more anxious than I to see justice done,---I hope you are as much so. Let me give you a description of that hatchet and see if there was not something about it that was peculiar. If not, you will tell me so. Officer Mullaly says of the handle---I will not read it all to you---that "it was covered with dust or ashes, or something like that and both sides of it was covered with something, what I called ashes." "Q. Can you give any further description of it? A. It looked as though it was rubbed in there." That is the ordinary man. "I think that would be my way of expressing it. It looked different from what it does today." But I will not read that at length, for Prof. Wood covers what he says about it. Fleet and Mullaly say the hatchet was covered with heavy dust or ashes. It was covered with white ashes not on one side where it would fall, but on both. And Fleet says when he asked "Did you notice anything with reference to the other tools in the box at that time? A. Yes, sir.

Q. Did you notice anything with reference to their condition with respect to ashes? A. I did.

Q. Will you tell us what it was? A. There was dust upon them.

Q. The same as upon this? A. No, sir."

Of course not.

Seaver was the next man that saw it on Saturday, and he was not connected with the Fall River police. He says, "It appeared to be covered with a coarse dust or ashes; I should call it more of ashes than of dust, it being a coarser dust than the dust on the box and other things

Q. And other things in the box, do you mean?

A. I think the things in and about the box."

It was peculiar.

Desmond gave an answer which was not grammatical but quite expressive. It was an attempt to explain something that cannot be put clearly on account of the restrictions in Court which will not allow a thing to be described by comparison. He says, "I looked it over, examined it quite closely---it had been in some place which was not very clean. It was all dirty, that is, it was covered with a dust which was not of a fine nature, that it is, it was too coarse to be called a fine---what I mean is it was not any sediment that might have collected on from standing there any length of time. It was a loose, rough matter which might be readily pushed off or moved off by pushing your finger on it."

"The dust that we found in general throughout the cellar was nothing at all such as was on that hatchet."

Now let us turn that hatchet over to Prof. Wood and see what he says. The first thing Prof. Wood does is to turn the eye of science with the magnifying glass upon that white and clean broken edge, and all the magnifying power of the lens that he used could not find in the interstices of the break one particle of dust. We had a great deal of dust thrown in our eyes about this dusty cellar, this ashy cellar and the dirt there, but that break was innocent and as clean of dust as though it was kept in a glass case. How long had it been broken, how long had it been there so that the magnifying power of the lens could not find deep down in the recesses of that place one atom of dust? It was covered with rust as it is now. Let me read it exactly. "When I received the hatchet it contained more of a white film on both sides than it does now, but it still contains adherent tightly in little cavities here in the rusty surface which can easily be seen with a small magnifying glass, white dirt like ashes, which is tightly adherent and which has resisted all the rubbing in the Court room."

My distinguished friend involuntarily handled it and rubbed it off and it was rubbed off more and more, but when Prof. Wood got it it was in the condition he has just described, and he adds "that coating looks as if it might be ashes," and when my learned friend who cross examined him called attention to that as a good place to contain blood stains, the fatal wash of ashes was there in the same crevices where blood went if it went,---the ashes went too. I never said and I do not say now that blood was ever on that hatchet. I am only putting before you all the facts and I stop there. I said to Prof. Wood,

"What would cause it to be adherent? A. It is in the crevices there and if the hatchet had been wet placed in that material it would stick more tightly and permeate those angles there more closely."

Not quite all of that. Then Prof. Wood could not have been clear of finding blood by any ordinary process and I asked him,

Q. "Assuming this hatchet to have been used for inflicting the wounds which you have heard described and then subjected to some sort of a cleaning process, whether or not that could have reasonably possibly to have occurred without your having discovered traces of blood upon the hatchet or the handle that you found? A. Before the handle was broken, not after."

That is to say, of course the hatchet could not have been used without the handle, but the handle had been broken and the man of science who examined into the question says that that instrument could have been cleaned and gives as his reason that the cavities and crevices would not take up the blood as that did. And he is as honest an expert as there is in the State of Massachusetts.

Then I took the skull and I have forborne to ask to bring them in here. I would not for one moment harass the feelings of this unfortunate woman whom I am compelled to subject to this discussion. I must ask you gentlemen of the jury to do as well as you can. The eye of science takes that skull. You will have to do the best you can with the pieces of tin and remember that tin comes up perpindicularly (sic) and not on a bevel as in a hatchet. The use of the tin was necessary as when being handled it rests at the point of juncture at the upper part of the skull; and those men who have testified have told you two very significant things. Dr. Cheever who did not see the external wounds and the sharp edges, from what he saw on the single wound says that those two wounds, one of which terminated in the jaw something like that, could not have been made by a hatchet three and a half inches in length and might possibly have been done with one as small as three inches. Dr. Draper who saw the external wounds and the skull after the flesh had been removed, tells us that it must have been three and a half inches, no more and no less. The difference is not material. It is not pertinent to the case and is not worth talking about. It has been said, and I must say here it has been said by my distinguished associate under a misapprehension of this evidence, that Dr. Dolan has been telling you in this Court room under oath that that hatchet was adequate to those wounds. My learned friend did not mean to do him any injustice, and at the expense of being tedious I must ask you to do him justice here now. All he said was this in the District Court case, and if I am not correct I will be set right,---that before he had examined the skulls, before the eye of science had probed the depths of the mystery of that cut he had said that that hatchet was adequate to inflict the wounds, but that afterwards when he examined the skulls he had changed his opinion as an honest man always does. It is the wicked man that does not change his mind or correct his testimony. On mis-information or lack of information Dr. Dolan said what was obvious to almost any one, that any ordinary hatchet could do it. He does not say so and ought not to be reported as saying so now. But that is not all. Oh, cruel fate, that brought us to our doom. Here was the ordinary shingler's hatchet like any other hatchet in ordinary appearance. One would have said, one with even the consummate skill of my friend who examined this witness would have supposed that any three and a half inch hatchet would have been the same as this. I would have thought so. You would have thought so. But it was brought in and applied by the solemn men of science and they said slowly and fatally to you, "It does not fit; it will not go in." You saw it yourself. This hatchet was put in there and they said,---it is a large word for a man of science to use,---we talk without due regard to the weight of our words, but when a man of science, as both of these men say, that that hatchet head fits accurately, it means a great deal.

What is the end of all this? Did that hatchet do that thing? I am unable to say. There is more to it than that. My associate reminds me, and justly, for I had almost forgotten the most significant thing of it all, that that handle was broken off not as axe handles are splintered---those of you who are carpenters know that---but, as I submit, not with entire confidence, because I am not so sure of my ground, not being used to this business, but I submit it for your consideration, broken off not as accidental, but as by design, that no part of the wood of that handle should be exposed to view.

I may be wrong. Correct me if I am. Do not take it on my submission of the proposition; take it on your own experience. Broken off so that no part of that wood should be seen. A pretty punky piece of wood, as it appears; not a difficult thing to break, but broken so recently. So far as the break is concerned nobody can tell when it was, within a month, two months, three months. But so far as the tell tale ashes and dust are concerned, it had not been there long enough to get the first settling or first sifting that had been put into that ash cellar, not the very first one.

What is the sum of it all? A hatchet head is found in that cellar, despised and rejected of men at first, because a false king was set up for them to worship, and it was only when he was deposed that they thought of trying what there was in this one. A hatchet head which had been broken off singularly and freshly; a hatchet head which was different in appearance from anything in that, box, which is examined by the police officers and afterwards by the eye of science, which disclosed the fact that it had been wet and then rubbed in ashes; a hatchet head which Professor Wood, with the same honest candor with which he said that could not have been cleaned, tells us could well have been cleaned after having been used; and a hatchet which almost miraculously fits to the dot the cuts that the dead man presents to the eye of those men.

I can do no more. All the language at my command could do no more than to reiterate the well-chosen words of my associate. We do not say that was the hatchet. It may have been. It may well have been the hatchet.

What is far more significant, in my opinion, is this circumstance to which he alluded and of which I am reminded, that if this mysterious and unknown assassin, who came into that house when there was no chance to get in, who hid in closets where there was no blood found, who went from room to room where no trace of blood was found in the passage ways or stairs, and who came out where there was no opportunity to come out without being seen by all the world; that unknown assassin, who knew all the ins and outs of that family, who knew that Bridget was going upstairs to sleep when she didn't know it herself, who knew that Lizzie was going to the barn when she couldn't have told it herself, who knew that Mrs. Borden would be up there dusting that room when no person could have foreseen it, who knew that he could get through and escape the eye of Lizzie and would find that screen door opportunely open at the exact time when it was possible for him to run in; that unknown assassin, with all that knowledge stored up in his head, which no human being can know, never would have carried away the bloody weapon with which this thing was done. Never. Never. He never would have gone into the streets, armed and loaded and fated with the evidence that would convict him. It would have been left beside the body of his victim. The very fact that no hatchet was found there is a piece of evidence, is one of those chips that float right with the stream, which points directly to the inmates of that house as the authors of this awful crime.

I am reminded, Mr. Foreman, that I omitted to allude to one fact. To do that I must once more ask your attention to the circumstances of that note, for it is introductory to what follows.

Mr. Morse went away at about quarter or ten minutes of nine. We do not know when, but as he thinks. Nobody knows certain times. He sees before he goes---let me ask you to go right back to this evidence exactly as it was given---just before he goes he sees Mrs. Borden in the sitting room, and she disappears up the front stairs, obviously to make the bed. He goes out, Morse does, and away. Lizzie comes down. She sees Mrs. Borden making the bed, because she tells Fleet so. That is about nine o'clock, as she tells Fleet. She comes down. She goes to her breakfast in the kitchen. Bridget goes out in the yard a moment. When she comes in Lizzie has gone upstairs again, and Mrs. Borden is still upstairs. The bed is not made. Bridget goes about her work, in and out of the dining room, to clear off the things. Mr. Borden has gone on his usual morning jaunt, and arrives at the bank at half past nine. Mrs. Borden comes down again, and Bridget sees her there in the dining room or sitting room, between the two rooms, dusting, and there receives her directions as to washing the windows. These things are in detail, but they (are) of the essence of this thing.

Then Bridget finishes her work out in the kitchen, cleans up the dishes and puts away the cloths, goes down cellar and gets her pail and water, and comes up again and goes into the house, through the rooms in the house, to shut the windows down. And Mrs. Borden has gone again. She was dusting the last time she saw her. She was dusting when she was struck in death. She goes upstairs, and it is almost the exact time that Prof. Wood's clock tells us, almost to a dot the time Professor Wood's clock tells us. And even then Lizzie couldn't bear to trust the deserted and empty house, but away down the front stairs she must come, away through the house, and to the back door, to make sure that Bridget was out there and that the house was deserted and empty; and it was then, it was then, that Mrs. Borden was killed.

No assassin could have come in without going through the house where she could see him. No assassin could have gone into that room without her seeing him or hearing him. No blow could have been struck, no groan could have escaped her dying and anguished lips, no weight could have fallen on that floor if she had not been where she could have seen him, that must not have instantly attracted her anxious attention.

Then she comes down stairs. Nobody has come to the back door. Bridget tells us they could not come without her knowing it. Bridget has come to the front door. It is shut and locked and bolted and locked again. And she tells Bridget---no, first she tells her father that Mrs. Borden has had a note and has gone out. She then tells Bridget about locking the doors if she goes out, because Mrs. Borden has had a note and has gone out. Bridget wants to know where. She says she has gone out to visit a sick friend; she had a note this morning, and it must be in town. Bridget had not heard anything about it. Bridget swears upon her oath she didn't know anything about it; she never knew anything about the note excepting what Lizzie tells her. And what she said to Mrs. Churchill was after that, long after that.

It is just as you would tell the news, Mr. Foreman, if it were true that a man were killed upon the railroad. You would go home and tell your wife that John Brown was killed upon the railroad this morning, not because you saw it but because you received it from a source that you did not question. You would not say, "Peter Jones told me that John Brown was killed." You would say it happened.

And that note was not the note of the assassin. If he was the assassin of Mrs. Borden, he never would have written a note for her to go when he went there to kill. If it was the assassin of Mr. Borden, he would not have written a note to ask the oldest and feeblest and dullest of the whole family to have left the house, and leave Lizzie and Bridget there to watch his proceedings. That wild and absurd suggestion is out of the case, and only the anxiety to find room to let this woman go led to its origin. Nobody has ever heard that the note was written. It never was. But a guilty conscience, gentlemen, is stronger than any power of craft, and this is what I am coming to. She had just told Bridget that she had gone out. She had told her father she had gone out, but she says to Bridget when she suggested about going out to see her, after it was known that the father was killed, she says to her---to Mrs. Churchill, it was, "She had a note to go and see some one who is sick, but I don't know but what she is killed too, for I thought I heard her come in." Who predicted disaster the day before? Who was the first one that told of it that day? Then Bridget says, "I will go to Mrs. Whitehead's and find out." She had not heard her come in. The distinguished counsel for the defence says that the noise of the fall was what deceived her. Great heavens, has he forgotten that the fall was long before she had told this story to Bridget of her having had a note to go out? She had not heard her come in. She had not thought she heard her come in, but she says, "Maggie, I am almost positive I heard her come in. Won't you go up stairs and see?" And yet when her father was found dead on the sofa she had no thought, no intent, no voice to call her mother, who might be in her own room one flight up, but called the domestic who was two flights up and never suggested "mother" until, by the accident of Mrs. Churchill's presence, they had begun to crowd around and she knew that the fatal moment was coming, and it must be broken to them by degrees. The craft of murder, gentlemen, is deep down, but there is a thread of providence through it all.

I had intended, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, at this point to attempt to recapitulate these things to you. I do not think I will do it. If I have not made them plain they cannot be made plain. Every one of them excepting the incident of the burning of the dress and the accuracy of the witnesses as to the dress that is produced, depend upon facts that there is no denial of whatever. We find a woman murdered by blows which were struck with a weak and indecisive hand. We find blows which were inspired by hatred, and not for lust or lucre. We find that that woman had no enemies in all this world excepting the daughter that had repudiated her. We find that that woman was killed at half past nine when it passes the bound of human credulity to believe that it could have been done without her knowledge, her presence, her sight, her hearing. We find a house guarded by night and by day so that no assassin could find lodgment in it for a moment. We find that after that body has been found murdered, a falsehood of the very essence of this whole case is told by that girl to explain the story to her father who would revenge it, and delay him from looking for her, which story is repeated to everybody that comes along. We find her then set in her purpose, turned into a maniac, so far as responsibility is concerned, considering the question of what to do with this witness who could tell everything of that skeleton, if he saw fit. He had not always told all he knew. He had forbidden any telling of that burglary in the day time of Mrs. Borden's things for reasons that I do not know anything about, but which I presume were satisfactory to him, but he would not have so suppressed or concealed this tragedy, and she knew it, and so the devil came to her, as God grant it may never come to you and me, gentlemen, but it may, and when the old man lay sleeping on the couch she was prompted to cover her person in some imperfect way and remove him from life, and conceal the evidences so far as she could in the hurried time that was left her. She had all she wanted. She did not call Maggie until she got ready, until she had got through. She had fifteen minutes, which is a long time, and then called her down, and without helping the officers in one single thing, but remonstrating with them for going into her room and asking her questions, those servants of the law who were trying to favor her, never opening her mouth except to tell that story of the barn and that story of the note, which is all she ever told in the world. We find that woman in a house where there is found in the cellar a hatchet which answers every requirement of this case, where no outside assassin could have concealed it, and where she alone could have put it. We find in that house a dress which was concealed from the officers until it was found that the search was to be resumed and safety was no longer assured. The dress was hidden from the public gaze by the most extraordinary act of burning that you ever heard of in all your lives by an innocent person.

We say these things float on the great current of our thoughts and tell us where the stream leads to. We get down now to the elements of ordinary crime. We get hatred, we get malice, we get falsehood about the position and disposition of the body; we get absurd and impossible alibis. We get contradictory stories that are not attempted to be verified; we get fraud upon the officers by the substitution of an afternoon silk dress as the one that she was wearing that morning ironing, and capping the climax by the production of evidence that is beyond all question that there was a guilty destruction of the dress that she feared the eye of the microscope might find the blood upon.

What is the defence, Mr. Foreman? What is the answer to this array of impregnable facts? Nothing; nothing. I stop and think, and I say again, nothing. Some dust thrown upon the story of Mrs. Reagan, which is not of the essence of the case; some question about time put upon the acts of Mr. Medley which is not of the essence of the case; some absurd and trifling stories about drunken men the night before, and dogs in the yard the night before, of men standing quietly on the street the same day of the tragedy exposing their bloody persons for the inspection of passers-by; of a pale and irresolute man walking up the street in broad day light. Nothing, nothing. The distinguished counsel with all his eloquence, which I vainly hope to match or approach, has attempted nothing but to say, "Not proven." But it is proven; it is proven.

We cannot measure facts, Mr. Foreman. We cannot put a yardstick to them. We cannot determine the length and breadth and the thickness of them. There is only one test of facts. Do they lead us to firm belief? If they do they have done the only duty they are capable of. You cannot measure the light that shines about us, cannot weigh it, but we know when it is light, because it shines into our hearts and minds and eyes. That is all there is to this question of reasonable doubt. Give the prisoner every vestige of benefit of it. The last question to be answered is, taking all those facts together, are you satisfied that it was done by her?

I have attempted, Mr. Foreman, how imperfectly none but myself can say, to discharge the sad duty which has devolved upon me in this case. He who could have charmed and entertained and inspired you is still detained by sickness, and it has fallen to my lot to fill unworthily the place of the chief law officer of this Commonwealth. But I submit these facts to you with the confidence that you are men of courage and truth. I have no other suggestions to make to you than that you shall deal with them with that courage that befits sons of Massachusetts. I do not put it on so low a ground as to ask you to avenge these horrid deaths. Oh, no. I do not put it even on the ground of asking you to do credit to the good old Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I lift you higher than that, gentlemen. I advance you to the altitude of the conscience that must be the final master of us all.

You are merciful men. The wells of mercy I hope are not dried up in any of us, but this is not the time nor the place for the exercise of it. That mighty prerogative of mercy is not absent from the jurisprudence of this glorious old Commonwealth. It is vested in a line of magistrates, one of the most conspicuous of whom is the honored gentleman who has addressed you before me, and to whom no appeal for mercy ever fell upon harsh or unwilling ears. Let mercy be taken care of by those to whom you have entrusted the quality of mercy. It is not strained in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is not for us to discuss that. It is for us to answer questions, the responsibility of which is not with you nor with me. We neither made these laws nor do we execute them. We are responsible only for the justice, the courage, the fidelity with which we meet to find and answer the truth.

Rise, gentlemen, rise to the altitude of your duty. Act as you would be reported to act when you stand before the Great White Throne at the last day. What shall be your reward? The ineffable consciousness of duty done. There is no strait so hard, there is no affliction so bitter that is not made light and easy by the consciousness that in times of trial you have done your duty and your whole duty. There is no applause of the world, there is no station of height, there is no seduction of fame that can compensate for the gnawings of an outraged conscience. Only he who hears the voice of his inner consciousness---it is the voice of God himself, saying to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant," can enter into the reward and lay hold of eternal life.