“Man, it may be, has not that great power of renunciation, but in the gentler breast of woman do we find that great gift of God, and in the breast of this little girl existed this great strength that enabled her to put aside her one love when she knew it was for the good of the one she loved.
“Sublime renunciation! Ah, it indeed is. Do you remember the letters he wrote three months after this sublime renunciation? He says in a letter written in September, 1903: ‘Three months ago I asked her point-blank. She thought, but said she would not; that it would shut me out,’ etc.
“The genuineness of this letter is not disputed; that it was written to Mr. Longfellow is not denied; that Mr. Longfellow was the trusted friend and adviser of Harry Thaw is admitted. Three months before September, 1903, when this was written, was in the early summer of 1903. Is not that true? Is it not true that she had refused him? In this letter he says she thought she did not want the man she loved to become an object of scorn.
“She looked up to the man she loved and she did not want the man she loved to be pointed at with the finger of scorn.
“In her little heart she said, ‘Oh, Harry, I love you. I love you so much that I will not drag you down. I want to leave you free, and the moment you say so I shall return to my own sad way. You shall be free and happy and I will go down until I, like many others, have disappeared from the world.’
“The sneer, then, is unjustified. The sublime renunciation did take place, although we men may not rise above our sordid occupations to realize it. Do you remember how his mother saw him holding his vigil in his room; heard him sob and moan, and how he told her about the awful wrongs done to a little girl whom he loved?
“And he told her he desired to protect the child from the vile wrong that had been done her; that he had proposed marriage, and that she—I quote the very words of the mother—that she had refused because she would not drag him down.
“Has this gray-haired and venerable mother in Israel come here to perjure herself, or did he deceive her when he told her that he wanted to extend his protecting arm over the girl whom the other had betrayed; that she, the poor little girl who was earning her living by the talents God had given her—she refused the man, not because she did not love him, but because she thought it would not be fitting to wed the man she so dearly loved.
“Sublime, indeed, was the renunciation of this girl, unless the mother of Harry Thaw has not told the truth upon the stand. I return to her story as told in her own words. She says: ‘He talked altogether too much of this thing. He did not sleep nights. He cried too much about it. It was not crying, but terrible sobbing. He would sit for hours without speaking or moving, and it was terrible, terrible. He got worse about it. He would sit for hours in a chair, just biting his nails. And then, in the midst of it, he would suddenly ask me about Stanford White. It seemed to be something that was ever present.’
“This, gentlemen, was the condition of Harry Thaw when, in 1903, he parted from Evelyn Nesbit and sent her back ahead of him to New York. You have the first faint dawn of that mental condition which manifested itself three years after. The tower in which reason held its seat did not topple over, but its foundations were already beginning to be undermined.