Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1884 — The Murderer’s Secret. [ARTICLE]

The Murderer’s Secret.

A thousand eyes turn at ogee to explore every man, everything, every circumstance connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited mintte dwell on the scene, shedding all their light and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meanwhile the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself, or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself; it labors under it? guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance from either heaven or earth. The sebret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whither it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising in his throat, demanding disclosure ; he thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it inffiis eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master, it betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicion from without began to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.— Daniel Webster.