W. W. Godding

“ 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. ”

“ Hicks and saying maintained it to the last, "he had done God's service and had nothing One year before, to repent of," he could well be calm. he had written, "Life is a fleeting dream, and it matters little when one goes. A human life is of small value," and now he was confronted by his own statement. ”

“ Then he opened on that motley audience with a Scripture lesson that they well might heed, commencing, "And fear not them that kill the body but are not able to kill the soul," continuing thence for fourteen verses. The New York Times correspondent says, "As he read the verses, sometimes looking on the book and sometimes upon the people before him, he seemed to lose sight of the gallows and declaimed the words with great earnestness and much dramatic effect." ”

“ Hicks, having lived a stirring life in both hemispheres, and having been brought in contact with all kinds of men, knew human nature thoroughly. He found Guiteau sincere in his religious belief. He did not claim to be an expert in mental pathology, but that he was in the pathology of sin is undoubted, and when this criminal bared his inmost soul at the confessional, and the Dr. ”