Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/567

 528

maire, and he had been in jail two years The astonishing thing was that out of that before. The card bore details of certain great roomful of cards, not a single one cor scars and marks on hand and body; they responded, or anything likecorresponded.with corresponded exactly with those on Felix. the measurements of the youth before us, ex Our friend the detective edged up and cept that particular one,— his own. Mistake watched the prisoner with professional de is impossible. light. Again questioned, Felix stuck to his The system has been used in France for story; but his composure was gone, his eye eight years, and found to be of infinite ser was troubled, his lips trembled, and the mus vice. Russia and some other countries have cles of his face twitched. The photograph adopted it; but its full value will not be was shown him. " Who is that?" apparent until it is employed everywhere, "Not me, some one like me " — but very and especially in England and America, — the two great refuges of criminals, — for shakily. "This is Alfred Louis Lemaire, and he was of course measurements can be transmitted by telegraph; and thus identification of arrested," etc. The fellow was down in an instant, as limp suspects established without trouble or de as wet paper. " Oui, c'est mon nom; " adding, lay, — a thing impossible now. — Chambers Journal. . "I knew you would find it."

SENSATIONAL TRIALS. MANKIND will study mankind to the end of time, and those whose lives are lived within limits will feel the interest of astonishment or horror or curiosity as to the lives of those who in any way — usually it is a frightfully bad way, but not quite al ways — have stepped or rushed or fallen out side the lines. Think how you breathe when a window-cleaner steps fairly to the edge of the sill forty feet in the air, and remember that that is the mental position of the mil lions when any one they know of is on trial for his life, or his existence as a man among fellow-men. Unless something really great in the way of public events — a war, for instance — absorbs all public attention upon itself, the appetite for stories told in courts of justice will not die out or even greatly diminish. They were the enjoyment of the Athenian slave-owners — perhaps the most intellectual class who ever existed — and of Roman plebe ians, and whatever survives for centuries dies too slowly for any one generation to expect in its own time a visible and notable decline.

We say this without in the least receding from our old position, that the appetite for sensational trials is in itself a bad sign, and its indulgence almost invariably attended with deterioration. The last generation, which habitually exaggerated the impact produced by every recurring thing, from church-going to the reading of broadsheets, just as we now exaggerate the results of methods of educa tion, and the effects of want and comfort, may have exaggerated in some respects the consequences of sensational literature. As Mr. Spencer tried to explain to the House of Commons' Committee, which sat respectful but incredulous, men are very savage still, and it is probable that the cultivated over rate the impression, whether good or bad, produced by all literature whatever. It takes a hard blow to bruise a rhinoceros, and the effect produced by hundreds of thousands of sermons is so slight that there is reason to hope that the consequences of years of sen sational reporting may be slight also. The devotees of respectability are an immense