EDITORIAL NOTES.
MR. WARD'S STORY "THE SILENT WITNESS."
We published in our January number the first of a series of stories by Herbert D. Ward, in which Mr. Ward will exhibit in dramatic form some monstrous imperfections in the present modes of judicial procedure. That there is great need of such a study is shown by the remarkable effect produced by the story already published, "The Silent Witness." In various parts of the country the press has taken particular notice of the story and of the question with which it deals. A recent number of "The Argus," Avoca, Pennsylvania, contained the following editorial:
"JUSTICE, WHERE ART THOU?"
"'The Silent Witness,' a powerful story in McCLURE's MAGAZINE for January, portrays in a graphic and thrilling manner the evil, which in some cases amounts almost to a horror, of holding in confinement witnesses in cases of capital crime who are unable to furnish bail.
"The story tells of a young and stalwart country lad who goes to Boston in search of fortune, and on the night of his arrival, while wandering about in quest of lodgings to suit his scanty purse, is the unwilling witness of a murder.
"He is arrested and held in the city jail to await the trial of the murderer.
"The news of his imprisonment reaches his widow mother up among the New Hampshire hills. She knows nothing of the circumstances further than the rumors brought to her by her country neighbors. She dies of a broken heart, though never doubting the innocence of her noble-hearted boy.
"The unfortunate young man learns of her death through his sweetheart, who comes to the Boston prison to see him.
"His grief is beyond endurance, and he curses the law that forces such suffering upon the innocent. He has brain fever, and when the case is called several months after the incarceration, the sheriff, who is asked to produce the only witness for the commonwealth, responds that he died that morning.
"The murderer, a saloon-keeper and ward man, has been at liberty under bail during the time that the innocent witness has been suffering the untold agony experienced by one who comes with spotless character from green fields and rural simplicity to the company of felons in a wretched cell. There being no witnesses against him at the trial, a nolle prosequi is found, and he goes free.
"This story is fiction, but it is not overdrawn. Such horrible things do happen in these fin-de-siècle days in a civilized country.
"In Scranton, only this week, a woman, Mrs. Nicotera, was released after having been in custody since February 28th last, as a witness in the Rosa murder case. She was confined with, her husband, who was also a witness, in the Lackawanna county jail until her health broke down, when she was removed to the Lackawanna hospital.
"On Tuesday she was released on her own recognizance. Her husband had been given his liberty in a similar manner some weeks before. She was thin and pale when she appeared in court, and had evidently passed through severe suffering. Careful nursing will be required to restore her to health.
"It would seem as if some means of meeting the ends of justice could be devised without the necessity of subjecting innocent persons to a felon's fate for simply being a chance witness of an affair that is to be brought into the court."
In the editorial columns of a recent number of the Cleveland, Ohio, "World" appeared the following:
"A DISGRACE TO CIVILIZATION."
"A heart-breaking story, founded on fact, in McCLURE's MAGAZINE for the current month, is an arraignment of the nineteenth century civilization that, considering its boasts of enlightenment and decency, is as horrible an official crime as any that has given so dark a stain to Russian treatment of innocence."
Following this is a long outline of Mr. Ward's story, and then the article continues:
"It is impossible to conceive of more awful inhuman injustice than this. But the story is not overdrawn. It has happened with variations scores, if not hundreds, of times. It is occurring or liable to occur this very day, not alone in Boston, but in Cleveland.
"At a meeting of the judges, a short time ago, Judge Lamson used the following language:
"'The detention of innocent persons as witnesses is, under the best of circumstances, bad. It is clearly the duty of the people of this country or their representatives to see that the present disgraceful method in vogue in the county jail is abolished. We have no right, under any law, to place innocent persons on a plane with criminals. It is nothing more or less than an outrage, inflicted on helpless people. I hope that the people of this county will be aroused to the enormity of this problem, and very soon put an end to this imposition.'
"And the counterpart of the story in McCLURE's MAGAZINE has happened here within a short time. Lewis Gerardin, a sailor, was released last April, after being detained six months. Several months before, Frank Blaha, a saloon-keeper, who committed the crime of murder in the second degree, managed to get bail. While Gerardin was held he received pathetic letters from his wife and family begging him to come home. They did not know why he was held, and he said that if they were to learn of his imprisonment they could not understand his innocence of crime. One day a letter was received from home, announcing that his favorite little son had died but a week before. The last words of the child called for his father. But Gerardin was not released until the prosecutor was ready to dismiss him.
"Such possibilities are a disgrace to any community that tolerates such a horrible law or such a feeble administration of it, and such callousness to human suffering that it will not save these innocent victims from its outrageous injustice. When to this brutality are added the comparative safety of the criminal, and the vile jails and the vile inmates with whom young boys and girls and honest men and decent women are thrown for the crime of witnessing a crime, it convicts the civilization of the age with a combination of stupidity and heartlessness that had better say nothing of the Czar of Russia or the ferocious Kurds. In its essential injustice and inhumanity it is not many removes from the lynchings of the South."
THE REAL LINCOLN.
The "McClure's Early Life of Lincoln," which has just been published, is worthy of comment in these pages for several reasons.
1st. It contains no less than twenty portraits of Lincoln; and although this is only one-third of the number that will appear in the whole life, it is more than twice as many as have appeared in any previous life. Furthermore, most of the portraits are new to the public.
2d. There are a large number of entirely fresh documents, several of which are absolutely essential to a full understanding of Abraham Lincoln, and some of which make it necessary to revise our opinion of Lincoln's career.
3d. It contains a remarkable record of the achievements of the Lincoln family, whose services to the country extended through nearly a century—a century which included the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Lincoln himself was ignorant of much of the history we have given about his ancestors; but in the light of the facts set forth, his career is logical and easily understood.
4th. We have shown by new documents that Lincoln's father was by no means the colorless individual we have hitherto understood him to be. The reminiscences of Christopher Columbus Graham, first published in this volume, together with records we have unearthed in Kentucky, show that Thomas Lincoln was the owner of a farm three years before his marriage, that he was a good carpenter, and that he was held in esteem by his neighbors; while according to Mr. Graham, Thomas's brother Mordecai (uncle of Abraham Lincoln) was a member of the Kentucky legislature. His two sisters married into leading families.
5th. In regard to Lincoln personally, we have shown how thoroughly he educated himself, so that at twenty-six he was able to more than hold his own as a member of the legislature of Illinois.
It does not detract from the great fame of Abraham Lincoln to show that he was a worthy son of a splendid ancestry, for his extraordinary personality would be just as hard to account for had he been a scion of the most notable family in the world. When a man climbs the Matterhorn it matters little whether he began his journey at Zermatt or a few furlongs farther on.