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Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

"Sketches New and Old"

Yet I must have committed them--you
would not deceive a stranger. But let the past be as it was, and let the
future be as it may--these are nothing. I have only cared for one thing.
I have always felt that I should be hanged some day, and somehow the
thought has annoyed me considerably; but if you can only assure me that I
shall be hanged in New Hampshire--"
"Not a shadow of a doubt!"
"Bless you, my benefactress!--excuse this embrace--you have removed a
great load from my breast. To be hanged in New Hampshire is happiness
--it leaves an honored name behind a man, and introduces him at once into
the best New Hampshire society in the other world."
I then took leave of the fortune-teller. But, seriously, is it well to
glorify a murderous villain on the scaffold, as Pike was glorified in New
Hampshire? Is it well to turn the penalty for a bloody crime into a
reward? Is it just to do it? Is, it safe?



A NEW CRIME
LEGISLATION NEEDED
This country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some of
the most remarkable cases of insanity of which there is any mention in
history. For instance, there was the Baldwin case, in Ohio, twenty-two
years ago.


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