Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/341

Rh died of one of those fevers which raged in the colony; and four days afterwards, Eric Jansen stood up during divine service in the church, and declared that “the Spirit had commanded him to take a new wife!” And a woman present stood up also and said, that “the Spirit had made known to her that she must become his wife!” This was four days after the death of the first excellent wife. Such a proceeding elucidates the spirit which guided Eric Jansen.

His murderer, the Swede Rooth, will be tried in the morning. It is believed that he will be acquitted, as the occasion of the deed was such as might well drive a man mad. Rooth had married a girl in the Swedish colony, contrary to the wishes of Eric Jansen. Persecuted by the enmity of Jansen it was Rooth's intention to leave the place, and accordingly he had privately sent off his wife and child, a little boy, in the night. They were pursued by order of Jansen, captured, and conveyed in a boat down the Mississippi, no one knew where, it is said to St. Louis. Captain Schneidan saw Rooth on the very morning when the intelligence of this reached him. He was pale and scarcely in his right senses. In this excited state of mind he hastened to Eric Jansen, whom he met just setting off to church in the midst of his followers. He thus addressed him,—

“You have had my wife and child carried off, I know not where. They are perhaps dead, and I may never see them more! I do not care to live any longer myself, but you shall die first!” And so saying he drew forth a pistol and shot him in the breast. Eric Jansen died almost in a moment. Rooth made no attempt to fly, but allowed himself to be seized by the exasperated people.

The little colony amounts to between seven and eight hundred persons, and is now under the government of two men whom they have selected, and they continue to hold the same religious faith in freedom from sin as