Was it really true that anger, malice, revenge, cruelty, hard, unyielding, implacable hatred ever marred such countenances!—that cold, murderous, steel-like scintillations ever beamed from those eyes? Was it possible that blasphemous execrations and hellish denunciations ever polluted such voices and blistered those pleasant tongues? Was it really true that those three intelligent men—courteous and affable—had plotted and executed some of the most cold-blooded, atrocious diabolisms ever known in modern times? Questions, perhaps, like [pg 59] these, were asked of themselves by hundreds of visitors yesterday, and left unanswered satisfactorily.
COLE YOUNGER
was more demonstrative than either of the rest. He always respected religion, he told one lady. His mother, he said, was a good, praying, Christian woman, and two of his uncles were Methodist ministers.
To another who urged him to pray for himself, for although “the prayers of the righteous availeth much,” salvation must necessarily depend upon himself, he said: “I conceive prayer to exist in every action, every thought, and considering the eventful life I have led, I cannot say I have been a praying man. A splendid theme for earnest sermons,” he continued, “is that divine mandate, ‘Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.’ ”
To another lady he said: “It is not my raising, but from the”
FORCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES,
“I am what I am. Accused of all manner of crimes before I had committed one, I am like the Wandering Jew.”
In expressing his gratitude for the kindness manifested by the ladies and the people generally, he said: “It takes a brave man to fight a battle, but a braver man to treat well a fallen foe.”
Every lady that entered his room he greeted courteously, and as she was leaving, he would ask her to pray for him and his brother—when James would chime in, “Not for us, never mind us, but pray for our dear sister.”
To a group of ladies who shrinkingly looked upon the two wounded men, Cole said: “Ladies, this is a terrible sight.” When one asked him in trembling, gentle tones, “Do your wounds pain you?” his reply was, “Wounds do not trouble me, madam; I would as leave die as be a prisoner.”