THE ORMONDVILLE TRAGEDY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 78, 29 February 1884, Page 3

THE ORMONDVILLE TRAGEDY.

i (Northern Exchange.) The details given of the fearful murder that took place at Hawke's Bay are very dreadful, and they must be Callous indeed who can read these details without finding their soul stirred within them. There is something unusually horrible about the whole affair. Something very awful m the thought that any one m human form could thus m cold blood on a Sunday evening when they were all asleep, deliberately muider four fellow creatures. Bui the horror is intensified when we know the /bul deed was done by the husband and father of the poor victims. That the perpetrator of tho foul act was not m his right mmd — that he was literally mad at the time he perpetrated the terrible deed we quite believe. Bit what made him bo ? What was it caused this man to more than once previously attempt to kill the wife of his bosom ? What was it that turned a once happy home into a bedlam, and a once kind parent into a source of terror to -his -offspring-? If asked on the gallows before being deprived of that life which he must justly forfeit (unless adjudged by the law to be insane), "What brought you here?" what wiil his answer be ? Why, the same old story over again— Drink. Driuk first brought misery into the once happy home, and now this is the result. Temperance advocates aris often called fanatics and other hard names ; but we ask, can any name bo too severe for that ivhicb thus turns the natural affections of a parent and love of a husband into a madness such as never possesses or inflames a wild beast ? This tragedy, like many equally dreadful, will soon be forgotten. Edwards, like many before him, little thought what this drink would briug him too, when he commenced to take it m moderation. This tragic event need 3no further comment, too plainly telling its own tale. How many will take warning by it?