“She was brutally repulsed.”
“But Strachan, the monster of Shelby county, whom the angel a few months afterward smote with Herodian rottenness—Strachan, whose flesh literally fell from his living skeleton—Strachan, who has long been paying in the deepest, blackest, hottest hole in perdition the penalty of his forty-ply damnation-deserving crimes was provost marshal.”
“He saw the frantic agony of the woman; called her into his office and told her he would save her husband if she would give him three hundred dollars and then submit—but oh! humanity shudders, sickens at the horrid proposal.”
“The wretched, half-crazed, agonized wife, not knowing what she did—acceded to save her husband's life—and the next morning she was found lying insane and nearly dead, with her baby at her breast, near the public spring at Palmyra.”
“And after all this, her husband was only released on condition that another should be shot in his place.”
“Young Smith was selected.”
“And then ensued a contest without a parallel in all the six thousand years of human history.”
“Humphrey refused to let any man die in his stead, declaring he should feel himself a murderer if he did.”
“Smith protested that he was only a poor orphan boy, and so far as he knew there was not a soul on earth to grieve for him; that Humphrey had a large family entirely dependent upon him for daily bread, and it was his duty to live while he could.”
“And Smith, the simple country lad, only seventeen years old, the Hero without a peer on all Fame's mighty scroll, took his seat on a rough box—and was shot!”