There are many “dead” men walking about who do not know they are dead.
An illustration of the logic of Judge O’Connor is best shown
in the case of a man who had looked long and lovingly on the
flowing bowl. He fell into a deep pit dug by workmen while
fixing the bridge over the Mohawk River. Several policemen with
ropes got the man out and he was arrested. Drunk and disorderly
was the charge against him when he stood before Judge O’Connor
somewhat sobered and chastened. “You were drunk last night,”
said the court. “No, sir, your honor, I wasn’t drunk.” “Why, you
must have been drunk,” said the court. “If you had not been, you
would have been killed by that fall.” “Shure, I wazzent drunk,”
persisted the culprit. “Then you are a dead man, so what are you
doing here,” declared the judge; and the man, taking the hint,
walked out somewhat amazed.
(677)
* * * * *
A marvelous thing for these times is reported from
Weathersfield, Conn. A convict who has served a sentence of
fifty years in the State prison receives his liberty at this
Christmas season (1909). In 1859, when he was twenty-one, he
murdered his wife, who was only a young girl of eighteen. He is
seventy-one now. Every one of the great occurrences in American
life which make our modern civilization what it is belongs to
that half-century for which this man has been behind prison
bars. Into what a changed world he will come. What can he do?
His friends are dead. His generation has passed. His own State
does not know him. One would suppose he would almost want to
commit some crime that would take him back to his home of fifty
years. What can he do? Society punished him, now what will
society do for him? There is no asylum for him. He knows nothing
of the business methods of the day. He is a living dead man.
Would it not have been more merciful for society by capital
punishment to have made him a dead man fifty years ago?
(678)
* * * * *
There is a very real “death” other than the merely natural, as the
following paragraph from the _Scrap Book_ will show:
Emperor Francis Joseph’s only surviving brother, Archduke Louis
Victor, was confined a lunatic, in a mountain castle hidden
away in one of the remotest corners of the Austrian Tyrol. He
himself, to all intents, is dead as far as the imperial family
and the great world at Vienna are concerned. (Text.)
(679)
=Dead Valued More than Living=--See ANCESTOR WORSHIP.
=Deafness=--See ARTICULATION.