The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

Further particulars with full biographies of all the parties in our

next edition.

Philip hastened at once to the Southern Hotel, where he found still a

great state of excitement, and a thousand different and exaggerated

stories passing from mouth to mouth. The witnesses of the event had told

it over so many time that they had worked it up into a most dramatic

scene, and embellished it with whatever could heighten its awfulness.

Outsiders had taken up invention also. The Colonel’s wife had gone

insane, they said. The children had rushed into the parlor and rolled

themselves in their father’s blood. The hotel clerk said that he noticed

there was murder in the woman’s eye when he saw her. A person who had

met the woman on the stairs felt a creeping sensation. Some thought

Brierly was an accomplice, and that he had set the woman on to kill his

rival. Some said the woman showed the calmness and indifference of

insanity.

Philip learned that Harry and Laura had both been taken to the city

prison, and he went there; but he was not admitted. Not being a

newspaper reporter, he could not see either of them that night; but the

officer questioned him suspiciously and asked him who he was. He might

perhaps see Brierly in the morning.

The latest editions of the evening papers had the result of the inquest.

It was a plain enough case for the jury, but they sat over it a long

time, listening to the wrangling of the physicians. Dr. Puffer insisted

that the man died from the effects of the wound in the chest. Dr. Dobb

as strongly insisted that the wound in the abdomen caused death. Dr.

Golightly suggested that in his opinion death ensued from a complication

of the two wounds and perhaps other causes. He examined the table

waiter, as to whether Col. Selby ate any breakfast, and what he ate, and

if he had any appetite.

The jury finally threw themselves back upon the indisputable fact that

Selby was dead, that either wound would have killed him (admitted by the

doctors), and rendered a verdict that he died from pistol-shot wounds

inflicted by a pistol in the hands of Laura Hawkins.

The morning papers blazed with big type, and overflowed with details of

the murder. The accounts in the evening papers were only the premonitory

drops to this mighty shower. The scene was dramatically worked up in

column after column. There were sketches, biographical and historical.

There were long “specials” from Washington, giving a full history of

Laura’s career there, with the names of men with whom she was said to be

intimate, a description of Senator Dilworthy’s residence and of his

family, and of Laura’s room in his house, and a sketch of the Senator’s

appearance and what he said. There was a great deal about her beauty,

her accomplishments and her brilliant position in society, and her

doubtful position in society. There was also an interview with Col.

Sellers and another with Washington Hawkins, the brother of the

murderess. One journal had a long dispatch from Hawkeye, reporting the

excitement in that quiet village and the reception of the awful

intelligence.

All the parties had been “interviewed.” There were reports of

conversations with the clerk at the hotel; with the call-boy; with the

waiter at table with all the witnesses, with the policeman, with the

landlord (who wanted it understood that nothing of that sort had ever

happened in his house before, although it had always been frequented by

the best Southern society,) and with Mrs. Col. Selby. There were

diagrams illustrating the scene of the shooting, and views of the hotel

and street, and portraits of the parties. There were three minute and

different statements from the doctors about the wounds, so technically

worded that nobody could understand them. Harry and Laura had also been

“interviewed” and there was a statement from Philip himself, which a

reporter had knocked him up out of bed at midnight to give, though how he

found him, Philip never could conjecture.

What some of the journals lacked in suitable length for the occasion,

they made up in encyclopaedic information about other similar murders and

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