The face of the girl is bright, expressive, and, in a degree, pretty.
Had she lived to womanhood she might have grown into what is called
a _fine_ woman. The features are large and regular, the eyes full of
vivacity and good temper, the nose prominent and well shaped, the
mouth pleasant, and indicative of resolution. Altogether the girl had
a generous and loving kind of lookout, and not rare in the species at
her budding and buoyant age. She looks like a child beginning to see
the vague outline of the sea on which she must voyage with the rest,
and not at all having such quick destruction in her thoughts, as came
to her ere she heard the breakers of human experience sobbing on the
shore. She was not too young to die, but too young to be slaughtered.
The boy’s face is that of a child; but a bright and reflective little
fellow, with a large development of brain, and, by the extreme
innocence of his expression, casting a deeper shadow of crime upon
the wretch who took away his life. Taking the photograph as a test,
he seems to be about eight years old and no more, and with such a
face that it must have been a sad thing for those who found him, to
look upon with the mask of murder stamped upon it.
I have also seen a bundle of papers, written over in large,
straggling chirography, and said to be communications of spirits,
through mediums, upon the topic of the murders. There is one-half
page written, so those say,—his wife, for instance,—who knew his
“hand of write,” by the dead father of the children. Their testimony,
whatever it may be, has as yet been of no special advantage in
directing investigation, at least as far as I know; probably on the
theory that if the souls of the departed undertook to interfere
in the proceedings of our courts, they might produce embarrassing
predicaments, being so far as we are instructed in such matters
incapable of appearing bodily on the witness-stand to testify to
facts within their knowledge; and, besides, it would be exceedingly
inconvenient for our judicial officials to serve a summons upon them,
as their places of special abode cannot, at present, be determined
upon with any exactness outside of a graveyard directory. Cases are,
however, upon the record wherein ghosts have pointed out such lines
of proceedings as finally led to the proper adjustment of contested
property and estates. Perhaps the day may reach us when not only the
spirit of the law, and the spirit of the past, but the spirits of
the dead, will have large control over the vexed condition of our
temporary existence here.
XVI.
GHOSTS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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