God created man and woman, and the woman
created the literary man when she put her teeth into the apple. We came
into the world under the shadow of the serpent. We are special
correspondents with the Devil's army. We report his victories in our
three-volume novels, his occasional defeats in our five-act melodramas."
"All of which is very true," remarked Jephson; "but you must remember it
is not only the literary man who traffics in misfortune. The doctor, the
lawyer, the preacher, the newspaper proprietor, the weather prophet, will
hardly, I should say, welcome the millennium. I shall never forget an
anecdote my uncle used to relate, dealing with the period when he was
chaplain of the Lincolnshire county jail. One morning there was to be a
hanging; and the usual little crowd of witnesses, consisting of the
sheriff, the governor, three or four reporters, a magistrate, and a
couple of warders, was assembled in the prison. The condemned man, a
brutal ruffian who had been found guilty of murdering a young girl under
exceptionally revolting circumstances, was being pinioned by the hangman
and his assistant; and my uncle was employing the last few moments at his
disposal in trying to break down the sullen indifference the fellow had
throughout manifested towards both his crime and his fate.
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