As Burton ceased speaking he swiftly threw a powder between his lips and quickly swallowed it.
The audience, judge, lawyers, bailiffs, all sat still, chained in a trance of astonishment as the accused man uttered this unexpected phillipic against a sometime tradition of New England, and likewise pronounced his guilt by this open and voluntary confession.
None seemed to realize that the prisoner’s speech was also his valedictory to life, until they saw him reel, and, ere the nearest man could reach him, fall, face downward, upon the court-room floor, dead.
Like the last ray of the setting sun, Burton’s expiring speech and deed had been the parting gleam of the nobility begotten by the blood of the superior race within his veins, and reflected on the bright surface of the civilization and culture of the white race. The predominance of animalism in the negro nature precludes the possibility of suicide in even the extremest cases of conscious debasement. Suicide is almost unknown among the negro race.
“Chapman found dead at his desk in the office! My God! What more must I bear in my old age! Oh! God, have mercy upon an old man!”
Poor old John Dunlap fell upon Jack’s shoulder and wept from very weakness and misery, and so the sailor supported and held him until the paroxysm of wretchedness had passed; then he gently led the broken old gentleman to the easiest chair in the parlor of the Dunlap house and begged him to sit down and compose his overwrought feelings.
“You say, Jack, that the porter found him seated at his desk this morning; that he thought he was sleeping, as my faithful employee’s head rested on his arms, and that it was only when he touched him and noticed how cold he was that he realized that Chapman was dead. My God! How awful!” groaned the distressed speaker.
“Yes, sir, and when the head clerks of the different departments arrived and raised him they saw lying on his desk before him ready for publication the notice of the closing of the business career of the house of J. Dunlap, and they took from the dead man’s stiffened fingers the long record of the firm to which he clung even in death.”
“I saw the poor fellow’s face grow pale and his features twitch as if in pain when I told him that the career of our house was ended. I urged him to rest here until he was better, but he only shook his head and hurried from my presence.”