Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1890 — Page 6

THE CHILD MUSI Cl AS, BY AUSTIN DOBSON. He had played for his lordsbip's levee, He had play >d for her ladyship's whim, Till the poor little head was weary. And tho poor little brain would swim. And the face grew peaked and eerie. And the large eyes strange and bright, And they say—too late—“He is weary, He shall rest for at least to-night !* But at dawn when the birds were waking, As i hey v etched in the silent room. With tho sound of a strained cord breaking, A something snapped in the gloom. ’Twaa a string of his violoncello, And they heard him stir in bis bed; “Make room for a tired little fellow, Kind God’.” was the last he said.

SMUGGLING QUININE.

A Young Physician’s Perilous Adventures.

grew more and more intact it was next to impossible to get any of the drug through the lines. The demand became so great that orders were sent out to the different commands to select from among their number a few men of nerve, ingenuity, and patriotism to the Southern cause who could be depended upo.. under the most critical circumstances. These men were to be instructed in the hazardous duties of smuggling quinine, and were to have the sanction of the Confederate Government, and the pi-otection, as far as it could go, of the Confederate army. They were to go into the Union lines as refugees, or in any way deemed most advisable by them, and were| to purchase large quantities of the drug, and use every means possible to get it through.

Among the men selected for this hazardous duty was a young student of medicine, who has since that time become prominent as one of the best physicians of the country. Dr. James Guthrie was born in Pocahontas County, Virginia, now West Virginia, and when the war broke out enlisted in the Confederate army, finally in 1862 becoming attached as an assistant surgeon to General Kirby Smith’s army. When the order of the War Department reached General Smith’s department one of the first men selected for the hazardous dut\ was young Guthrie, then a mere boy of twenty or thereabouts.' He willingly accepted the dangerous commission, and set out for St.. Louis, Mo., with

credentials hidden about his person. When he reached St. Louis he stowed away in a safe place several thousand dollars in gold with which he had been provided by the Confederate Government to purchase the drug. Days were spent aboitt the hospitals by the youDg student and acquaintances made with the officials, until after the lapse of a few weeks he became to all intents and appearance a regular assistant of the surgeons. No suspicion of the character of his business was ever created; and it was not long before young Guthrie was able to go about the city purchasing medicines and drugs ostensibly for use •at the hospitals where so many Union soldiers lay wounded and sick. Day after day the young man purcha3ed,first herie and' then there, at different drug stores* frounce after;; oun^ca; untij the lapse of several weeks he had enough secured ‘as : he Relieved to justifiy a trip into the Southern lines, Meanwhile be li£4 made j the « acquaint aape of a tinsmith of undoubted Southern sympathy to whom

LONG IN 18(52-’d3-’<>4 l lie Confederate Government had lost many of its best men through the malarial influences of the swamps and low-lying country of athe Mississippi and *the Arkausas livers. Quinine became exceedingly valuable, but as the blockade of Southern ports

he imparted hi* secret. One night this tinsmith and the young doctor collected all the quinine he bad purchased and sealed it up in long, hollow tubes of tin, which were soldered perfectly water-tight. These tubes, about four inches in diameter and three or four feet long, were covered with the bark of cottonwood limbs, and the ends were concealed br short blocks of the proper size, which were also covered with bark, presenting the appearance of pieces of wood of the ordinary size. So perfect was the work that a thousand men might have glanced at them without the slightest suspicion of any irregularity in their make-up. When all was ready the young doctor bought an old wagon with a pair of brokendown horses which the meanest-prin-cipled Union or Confederate force would never have dreamed of confiscating, and then after clothing himself in a suit of clothes bought at a secondhand store started out of the city. Over one hundred mile 3 was made, with several narrow escapes, before the doctor again neared the river with his old team. For the last day or two the scouts and videttes had seemed to be unusually suspicious, and the young doctor concluded to give away or sell his tram after gaining the river. When he arrived upon the bank he followed the road still down the stream until he came to the house or dug-out of a small farmer. Here he unloaded his bark-covered tubes, and after tying them together and attacking a bunch of brush to them to make them look like an ordinary bunch of drift he put them in the river and let them float off in the current, which they did, looking like a bunch of brush which had floated from the shore. The old wagon and horses were then driven to the home of the farmer, traded off for a boat and pair of oars, with three or four days’ provisions, and an old blanket tin own in as good measure. The young smuggler floated and rowed away night after night, sometimes ahead and often behind the bunch of brush which hid away the allimportant tubes of quinine. In the daytime, whenever near the lines or outposts of the Union forces, he would remain hidden in some creek or small Rtream with his boat and bunch of driftwood in close proximity. After three nights’ travel early one morning, as he was quietly floating and paddling along about one hundred yards from the shore, he was halted tor tho fifth or sixth time and commanded to laud. Of course he did so, expecting to find himself questioned by a Union vidette. Meantime the quinine was calmly and smoothly floating along just ahead of him. But this time the young doctor found himseli confronted with a squad of Confederate cavalry, an outpost of General Joseph Shelby’s brigade. The Captain in charge closely questioned him as to his business and where he was going, and not perfectly satisfied with his answers, ordered him to mount a horse and ride to camp, about one mile below. Young Guthiie know that if he was taken into a Confederate camp, which was located below where he had been arrested, his quinine was safe and he quietly mounted, determined, however, not to give a hint of his real business until he wa3 sure that he was with friends. The squad and their prisorier soon reached the headquarters of the colonel commanding, when the prisoner was turned over to the commanding officer. "When the young smuggler found that he was really with friends he produced his credentials and told the commander the secret of his business. A boat, or rather two or three skiffs and small punts,wore soon found, and the young fellow, accompanied by several soldiers, paddled along shore up-stream until they met the little bunch of driftwood. They soon towed it ashore at the camp, where the long tin tubes with their bark covering were taken out of the water. The quinine was found in perfect condition, and was immediately forwarded under a guard to the nearest large post. Young Guthiie was gived a letter vouching for the safe arrival of a large supply of the great drug. He was sent to General Smith’s command, where, after a high compliment for his courage and ingenuity, he was well paid aud recommended to undertake another trial of the same sort. Five times ho succeeded in getting through the lines with large quantities of quinine, but the sixth time he was captured and sent to prison at Fort Delaware, where he remained until the war was over. Dr. Guthrie is to-day one of the most popular and eminent physicians in this country, with an immense practice, but seldom too busy to tell some interesting story or reminiscences of the times which tested the nerve and ingenuity of the bravest.

A Good Man.

A ragged man applied to the superintendent for a position. “Are you thoroughly acquainted with the business the superintendent asked. “Xes.” “Have you ever been employed on a railrOad?” “Yes.” “Have you ever been conductor of h passenger train ?” “Yes.’ “I suppose you turned in all the monev which you took in ? ” “What?” f *T skid yes.” -•s‘Look here, my friend, yon are the man whom this road lias been .trying to shun. You don’t need any Credent tiaTs.‘ ! 'We dbfa’t want ydu.”— Arkari * ifkW*XV9,v4ler. i -i ..ri-wi.-T?

RESPITE FROM DEATH.

K£MMLER, the mckberer, gets a NEW LEAS- or LIFE. Judge Wallace, of the Federal Court, Grant i a Writ of Habeas Corpus—The Constitutionality of Kxo;ution by Electricity to Be Teste 1. [AUBUBN {.V. T.) CORRESPONDENCE.]

was in place aud ready for tlie last test. The witnesses of the execution had been chosen and many of them wore on hand. The day, almost the hour, whs selected. The murderer had been told that his time had come to die, and had been baptized and said his good-by to the best friond he ever had

in life. His coffin was in readiness or him. Then, at llie eleventh hour, that stern and inexorable voice o tho people, m the shape of its time-honored agent, the habeas co-pus act, steppe I in, and there was a&tav. A ain the questioi| was raised whether this penalty was or was not eiuei and unusual, and t ie.courts of the United Btat-s were ealle I upon lo decide tne issue. The murderer was snatcl ed from a deatn which might have prove l so awtul ns to have shocked the c vllized world an l might have been as peaceful as the sleep of child-

hood. Tne stay came with tho person of Roger M. Bherman. of the law firm of Bhermau & Herling, of New York City, and reads as follows: The President of the United States to Charles F. Durston, Warden and Agent of Auburn Prison, greeting: * The people of the United States whom God defend, do command you that you have the body of William Kemmler, by you imprisoned aud detained, as it is said, together with the time and cause of such imprisonment and detention by whatsoever name the said William Kemmler is called or charged, before

the Circuit Court o f the United States for the northern district of New York, to be held at Canandaigua on tho third Monday of June, at 10 o’clock in the morning. Witness tho Hon. Melville W. Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States. Fail not at your peril, and have you then and there this writ. On the back of the writ is this indorsement: The within writ is granted this 28th day of April, 1(80. WiElia« 8: ’Wallace, ; iti Judge UnJte4i6jtiatpft flircuit Court. ' 1 It is, only by chance that, the present step, ostensibly ip behalf of , Reminler-, ctoittts'fer anythin#, fbrihad notltftere, been a little .delay in getting, th,e, apparatus in

ILLIAJI KEMMLER. the Buffalo murderer, has received anew lease of life, and there 1 will be no electrical execution in Auburn Siate Prison this week. Indeed, it is altogether probable that the proof 'of the success oriaili re of a legal execution by electricity in this State will be postponed for many months. The iirrnnrement.s had been made to the smallest detail. The hideous paraphernalia of the secret death chamber

THE CHAIR OF DEATH.

AUBURN STATE PRISON.

final order and in completing other arrang meats. the criminal would have been shocked into the next world on Tuesday morning just alter daybreak. It was the Warden’s intention, it is declared by those who have seen the first notification, to have the deoi done in that hour. Had his original {dans' been carried out the movement 'of K**mmler’s mysterious Iriends would have b -an fruitless. The Warden, for some reason best known to himself, kept putting off announcing to Kemm'.or the caange in his fortunes. It wav a little before 4 o’closk when the Warden went to tell the unsuspecting murde.er of the great mean ng of me paper he had signod and the greater meaning or the writ ot habeas corpus. Mr. Durston, laying, his bund on Kemmler’s shoulder, explained to him that a writ of habeas corpus hod been served upon him: and that the paper he signed before Mr. McNeil meant that he had a new lawyer who was going to try his case over asain. The prisoner gazed with a look that showed he did not fully understand the Warden’s language. Then Mr. Durston said: “It means that your execution is not coming off now, aud that you will have two months and perhaps longer to live." “Oh." said Kemmler, just as if the real facts were beginning to dawn upon him; “that makes me leel easier.” The Warden stood there a moment; Kemmler walked to his chair and sat down. His face was expressionless, and he said nothing to indicate great astonishment or delignt. Mr. Durston turned, locked the corridor door, and came away. The future of the case will be one of longprotracted litigation. When Kemmler Is produced at Canandaigua on June 16 the first argument will be had. That may last for several days, and it may be weeks before the decision of tho court is handed down. If it is against Mr. Sherman h« may take the case on anpeal to the United States Supreme Court at Washington. There are many cas *s before that bench, and it may take months or years to get tho question fully before that court. When the final decision is delivered Kemmler may be grayheaded.

Tlio Chair of Heath. The preparations for Kemmler’s execution had been lully completed, and the 6hock of the law’s thunderbolt would have pierced his body within less than twelve hours except lor tho interference of Lawyer Sherman in his behnl*. Too fatal chair in which the condemned man whs to sit while he received the deadly electric current (an exact picture of which is herewith presented) is thus described: It is a comfortable eimir with an upright back and arms that are adjustable to those of the men who sits in it. There is a leath-er-covoied -pillow ior the head to lest against. Fastened to the back is an adjustable figure 4. which can be ra sed or lowered so as to come down over the head of the condemned. The technique of the thing is very simple. Through the ’lower outer angle of the 4 (figure a) there is a nole, and through this w.ll pass a rubber tube containing a rod of steel or copper, to which a wet sponge is fastened. Tins sponge will touch the crown of the condemned man’s head. Another pipe, with webbing inside and a apouge. will pass up through the seat so Ji9 to touch the base of thespino. when the man is strapped firmly in his seat. Tin's will be accomplished by the use of several straps, one p issiug around the chest, another

around the abdomen, which will draw the wobbing iigainst the. spine, while the arms will be firmly strapped to those of the chair on which they will rest. The feet will rest on a comfortable foot rest, after the fashion of those in use in a barber-shop. Indeed, the strong resemblance Of this instrument of death to a barber’s chair has already caused the prison officials to speak of electrocution in their roughly humorous way as a baldheaded shave. The electricity wilt be generated by a dynamo which has been

placed near to the power-room, a thou- ; sand feet away from the place of execution, and the insulated wires which will connect ' it with the rods end sponges have all been strung in readiness for their work. There is nothing uncomfortable about the chain save the deadly current whicn goes with it, and if death, by the latter be as sudden and painless as its affirm, it will certainly be the most mereii ful means of capital punishment used anywhere. •' ''• • -T. I H- I T's , ■ k Well Wisher—-A traveler the desert. . ‘ ; ; ’,, j [....

LIQUOR LAWS INVALID.

THE lOWA AND MICHIGAN ACTS DECLARED VOID. The Supreme Court of the United States Decides that Intoxicants May Be Imposed, and that They Are Not Liable to Unusual Taxes. [Washington special.} The United States bupreme Court on Monday tendered an opiniou adverse to the constitutionality ot State laws in prohibition States providing for the seizure of liquor brought from other States. Such laws, it is held, are interferences ■with interstate commerce. The case in which the decision was made was that of Lei ay against Hardin, brought here on an appeal from the Supreme Court of lowa. Leisy, a beer manufacturer of Peoria, shipped beer to Keokuk, which waß seized in the original p&(kages by Hardin, a State official, as having been at nt tin re in violation of the lowa iaw. The Supreme Court of lowa held ibat the law under which this official acted was valid, but the Federal Bupreme Court to-day reversed that decision. Justices Gray. Harlan, aDd Brewer dissented from the opinion of the majority of the court. The opinion cited a liumtor of cases btaribg upon interstate commerce; among others "the license cases” laws pnsEed by Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Khcde Island in reference to the sale of spirit-. ujus liquors, came under review in the court and were sustained, although the members of the corn t who participated in the decisions did not concur in any common ground upon which torebt them, in which Chief Justice Taney is quoted as holding that spirits and distilled liquors are universally admitted to bo subjects of ownership and property and therefore subjicts of exchange, barter and traffic, like any other commodity in which a right of property exists; that Congress, under its general power to regulate commerce with foriign nations, may inrescribe what merchandise shall be admitted and what excluded. But inasmuch as the law of Congress authorized the importation of ardent spirits, no State has a rigut to prohibit their introduction. After referring to these and other decisions bearing on State license laws, the Court in its opinion to-day says: • These decisions rest upon the undoubted right of the btates of the Union to control their purely •internal affairs, in doing which they exercise powers not surrendered to the National Government; but whenever the law of the sta.e amounts essentially to a regulation of commerce with foreign nations or among the States, as it does when it inhibits, directly or indirectly, the receipt of an imported commodity or its disposition before it nas ceased to become an article of trade beta een one State aud another, or another country aad this, it comes in conflict with a power which, in this particular, has been exclusively vested iu the General Government and is tbeiefore void. “The plaintiffs, citizens of Illinois, had the right to import their H heer into lowa, aud had the right to sell it, by which act alone it became mingled in the common mass of property within tlie btate. Up to that point of time, in the aoseuce of Congressional permission to do so, the btate had no power to interiere by stizure, or auy other action, in prohibition of importation and sale by. the non-resident importer. “Articles which Congress recognizes as subjects of interstate commerce may be controlled by state laws amounting to regulations, while they retain that character ; but to concede io a Stale the power to exclude such articles without Congressional permission is to concede to a majority of the people of a Stale represented in the btate Legislature the power to regulate commercial intercourse between the btates.” .lusiices Gray. Harlan, and Brewer, iu summing up thp reasons which satisfy thorn that the judgment of the Bupreme Court of lowa snould be affirmed, say : “The power of regulating or prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors belongs, us a branch of the police power, to the Legislatures of the several btates, and can be judiciously and effectively exercisjd by them alone according to their views of puulic j oiicy and local needs, and cannot practically, if it can consutuitonally, be wielded by Congress as part of a rational and uniform system. ■The lowa piohibitory laws were enacted by the Legislature in the exercise of its undoubted power to piOuect iis inhabitants ugainst the evils, physical, moral and social, attending the free use of intoxicating liquors. They are not aimed at interstate commerce, and have no relation to the movement of goeds lrcm one btate to another, but operate cnly ou intoxicating liquois wiiLiu the limits o. tne Btate. They include all such liquccs without discrimination', and do not even mention where they are made or whence they come. They affect commerce much more remotely than laws o;a btate—tho validity of which is unquestioned —authorizing the construction of bridges and damsacioßß navigable waters within its limits, which wholly obstruct the course of commerce and navigation, or than quarantine laws, which operate diiectlyupon all ships aud merchandise coming into the ports of the State. If the. statutes of a btate restricting or prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors within its territory are to be held inopera ive and void as applied to liquors sent or brought from another Slate and sold by the importeis iu original packages, the consequence must be that un inbabiLaut of any Btate may, under the pretext of interstate commerce, ,ttnd without license or supervision of any public authority, carry or send liquor into and sell in any or all of the other Btates, despite.aay legislation of those BtatAjafc'the subject, and although his own StabWSwftuld be the only one v. bich had not enacted similar laws.” Nothing short of affirmative and explicit legislation on the part of Congress will convince the dissenting justices that it ctntemplated or intended such a result. They quote from the decision in the license cases in which the court sustained these views, and contend that tho silence and inaction of Congress upon the subject during ihs long period since the license cases appear to require the inference that Congress intended ihat the law should remain as thereby declared by the court, rather than to warrant the presumption that uo, gress intended that commerce among ihs States should free from theindirect effect Oi such an exercise of the police power lor public safety, as was adjudged by that decision to be within the constitutional authority of the Btate.

The court )also decided the case of Henry Lyng against the people of the State of Michigan, involving the validity of the Michigan law taxing beer iu the o.iginal package -manufactured in Wisconsin and sold in Michigan. The court denies the } o«er of a State to exclude directly or indirectly the subject? or " interstate commeice by the imposition of burdens thereon, or to regulate such commerce without toagressioual permission. 'the seme rule.it is held, which applies to the sugar i-f Louis.ana, the cotton of t-outh Carolina, the wines of la i omia, and the lobacco of Maryland and Cm.neoticut applies to alt commouiiies in wbich a right of traffic exists, is recognized by the laws of Congress, the decisions of courts ana the usages of the commercial world, and should apply in this case. Tito decision of the State Court of Michigan, deciding that Lyng was liable to tax, is in. ihiv. cake also reversed. Justices Gray, Harlan and Brewer dissented from the opinion of the court on the same grounds stated in the Lei By-Hardin case. 42+ .

Establishing a Precedent.

A nervous, dyspeptic book-keeper was busy at his desk near a window on his bookd, says the Macon Telenrpph. A small toy was on the sidewalk, blowing one of those balloons making a continual cat-cry. The book-keeper 3tood it as long as he possibly* could, so, calling the hoy, he gave him a nickel and asked him to move on. The lad caught on that his music was worrisome, and hastened away to post his chum, who was soon at the same stand, blowing for dear life and a nickel. The book-keeper looked out, and, seeing it was a different lad, was in the act of repeating his former request, but seeing the first lad peeping around the corner, having a dozen or more with him, a policeman was called. Tffieboys were reprimanded in the Eeoorder’s Court next morning and - turned !©oa\ ■ Hiipi -u-mt t»; luifhw n#yi>