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136 increase, the number of such cases being greater each year. It seems to me that such cases now average at least one a day for the entire country over. They are well exemplified by the following one from The New York Herald:

"Roanoke, Va., Saturday. — When George J. Shields, a well-known young business man, reached his home, in the heart of the city, at the luncheon hour today, he found his three-year-old daughter Mildred lying on the reception hall floor with two ugly wounds in the head. Following blood-stains from the dining room to an upstairs chamber, he found his wife in a clothes closet w4th her throat cut from ear to ear and her head horribly hacked. Mrs. Shields managed to gasp :— 'A large black negro man came through the kitchen and attacked me in the dining-room.'

"Excepting this, there is no clew to the criminal. Mrs. Shields had been assaulted, after which her assailant dealt her several blows on the head with a hatchet, fracturing the skull, dragged her upstairs, where he cut her throat with a razor and threw her into a closet, fastening the door on the outside.

"The dining-room floor bore evidences of a terrible struggle. The physicians entertain little hope for the recovery of either the mother or child.

"Ever since the discovery of the tragedy, a large