Page:The last chapter in the life of Guiteau (IA 101648406.nlm.nih.gov).pdf/3



INIS coronat opus," says the old Latin. The Sabbath school books of the last fifty years have made us familiar with the contrasted ends of the truly good and the horribly wicked, the dime novel portrays the calm indifference of the hardened criminal face to face with his doom, but since Bellingham held out his hand under the clear sky that canopied his scaffold, remarking, "I think we shall have rain," we have had but few eminent examples to teach us how a lunatic meets the extreme penalty of the law.

Whatever we may individually believe in regard to the mental responsibility of the great State criminal of our time, the closing acts of his life were, to use the psychological phraseology just now in vogue, sufficiently "out of environment" to be entitled to a record in the pages of the.

On the 24th of June, 1882, the spiritual adviser of Guiteau, the Rev. Dr. W. W. Hicks, informed him that all efforts for a respite had failed; that President Arthur had declined to interfere with the execution of the sentence on the 30th of June; that his decision was final, and that nothing remained but to make ready for the event. It was thought best for the criminal to disabuse