Page:Anti-Syllabus and Tom Strang Killed (1886).djvu/9



—I send you this account of the killing of who was shot here, a few nights ago.—

Troy, N. Y., August 20, 1885.

"Poor things! they have no one to steal vegetables for them now."

There was a powerful sermon in these simple words, as they were uttered, with a bitter laugh, over a dead body, a few nights ago, here in Troy. There was also a glint of that grim, terrible kind of humor in them that flashes out of a bold-spirited, reckless man when, rendered almost insane by some terrible evidence of human misery, he is full ready to curse his God.

It was in an iron-worker's cabin in South Troy, where poverty's pinch makes even little children look old, where a wolf is chained at every door, and where the Iron King rules with an iron hand.

The speaker was a stalwart iron-worker, standing beside a blood-stained pallet, upon which lay the dead body of his friend. The "poor things" he referred to were the nine starvelings of the dead iron-worker. The eldest was a pale, sad-faced boy of twelve; the youngest, a tiny infant, four weeks old. Their widowed mother, a wan, starved-looking woman, sat beside the pallet, not a tear in her eyes, but her quivering, bloodless lips giving vent to moans of anguish. Looking at the famished breast of the widow, there was something terribly suggestive in the way in which the little Infant sucked its tiny fingers. The stamp of hunger was upon the faces of the dying ten; the stamp of death was upon the face of their natural protector. Dying they, because they have feasted by stealth for the last few weeks upon the proceeds of robbery; and now the guilty thief, who has just paid the penalty of his crime, lies dead on yonder pallet; and "they have no one to steal vegetables for them now."

The interior of the cabin, though scantily furnished, bears every sign of neatness. The pine table and floor are scoured white, and a tallow dip stands flickering in a tin candle-stick that shines like silver. Everything within is neat and clean, but there is very little to be kept so. It is indeed the home of poverty, and the wolf's red eyes seem to gleam in every corner.

This is the cabin of the widow and orphans of big, brave-hearted TOM STRANG, who now lies dead on yonder pallet, shot in his tracks