THE LASH WANTED.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 415, 11 February 1890, Page 2

THE LASH WANTED.

An affiliation case which was heard at the R.M. Court on Saturday gave a shameful example of what one who is by courtesy termed a man may be guilty of without being overtaken by a punishment in some measure commensurate with the enormity of his offence. The defendant (named Wilson) had won the affections of a girl, promised to marry her, ingratiated himself with her parents and was trusted and treated in so hospitable a fashion that any decent man would have felt himself acting the part of a serpent if he had not been deeply grateful (or the kindness shown him. But in the case referred to the term decent man need not be applied. The trust was betrayed, and the girl tempted to her ruin. But the traitor continued to to play the part of a friend, admittedly an erring one, but still one anxious to atone in a measure for his guilt, and intending to save his victim from disgrace by fulfilling the promise he had made. The excuse being that he wished to prepare a comfortable home to take his wife to, and the apparent sincerity of his promises, in a measure allayed the anxiety of the girl’s friends, but they had little reckoned the baseness of the man with whom they had to deal. An anonymous letter at length put them on their guard as to how they were being deceived, and the parents were forced to take the case into Court. Bad as the fellow’s conduct had been all through the matter his utter want of the slightest spark of honor was proved when he tried to brazen the matter out in Court, to still further blacken the character of the girl he had ruined, to blast the reputation of her family, and to drag in the mire the names of other people whom the witness he had himself subpoenaed proved were free from a taint of the suspicion endeavored to be fastened upon them. The wretch dare nor deny his own guilt, and while to make out that the witness were perjuring themselves he acknowledged that he saiti hn thought he would marry the girl, It is a great pity that some more severe punishment than that which merely affects the pocket cannot be the reward of such villany, and if the girl’s enraged brother had broken nearly every bone in the fellow’s body the chastisement would have been considered light by every decent man.