Undoubtedly that guide knew best.
With pride and pleasure he showed us a representative assortment
of England's most popular and prominent murderers. The English
dearly love a murderer. Perhaps that is because they have fewer
murderers than we have, and have less luck than we do in keeping
them alive and in good spirits to a ripe old age. Almost any
American community of fair size can afford at least two murderers
--one in jail, under sentence, receiving gifts of flowers and angel
cake from kind ladies, and waiting for the court above to reverse
the verdict in his case because the indictment was shy a comma;
and the other out on bail, awaiting his time for going through the
same procedure. But with the English it is different.
We rarely hang anybody who is anybody, and only occasionally make
an issue of stretching the neck of the veriest nobody. They will
hang almost anybody Haman-high, or even higher than that. They
do not exactly hang their murderer before they catch him, but the
two events occur in such close succession that one can readily
understand why a confusion should have arisen in the public mind
on these points. First of all, though, they catch him; and then
some morning between ten and twelve they try him. This is a brief
and businesslike formality. While the judge is looking in a drawer
of his desk to see whether the black cap is handy the bailiffs
shoo twelve tradesmen into the jury box.
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