Page:The Great Harry Thaw Case.djvu/235



"In the performance of my task it will become my duty to speak of the dead. I shall not be unmindful of the injunctions of the departed. Only that which is good should be spoken, but I cannot forget the circumstances under which the protection of the living demand that the truth shall be told, no matter how it blights the memory of the dead or how painful to the survivors.

"Under that law we find ample protection for his rights and life and to that law I shall resort as to the horns of the altar, for his safety. In the performance of my task it will be my imperative duty—unshunable duty—to speak of the dead.

"I shall not be unmindful of him and shall speak in no other terms—if possible—than those of praise. I shall not forget that for the protection of the living the truth must be told, no matter how painful to the dead or those who survive him.

"Of those survivors I can speak in no other terms than those of the most profound sympathy. For the widow who mourns and the son who survives I have no words than those of sympathy. Gladly would I remove from them, were it in my power, the cloud which must henceforth accompany their life, and gladly would I remove from the young man the sentence that the sins of the father must be visited upon their children to the second and third generations.

"Gentlemen, the story you have listened to is the story of two young persons whom fate, by inscrutable decree, had destined to link together, that they could walk through life together. It is a story—the saddest, most mournful and tragic which the tongue of man has ever uttered or the ear of man has ever heard in a court of justice.

"Let me begin briefly with the story—one filled with incidents with which a volume might overflow and a tragedy night be filled, as though it were written by the hand of a Shakespeare.