obber, and what you call a murderer, likewise, has his rights,
which men of enlightened humanity and conscience should regard in so
much the more liberal spirit, because the bulk of society is prone to
controvert their existence. An almost spiritual medium, like the
electric telegraph, should be consecrated to high, deep, joyful, and
holy missions. Lovers, day by, day--hour by hour, if so often moved to
do it,--might send their heart-throbs from Maine to Florida, with some
such words as these 'I love you forever!'--'My heart runs over with
love!'--'I love you more than I can!' and, again, at the next message
'I have lived an hour longer, and love you twice as much!' Or, when a
good man has departed, his distant friend should be conscious of an
electric thrill, as from the world of happy spirits, telling him 'Your
dear friend is in bliss!' Or, to an absent husband, should come tidings
thus 'An immortal being, of whom you are the father, has this moment
come from God!' and immediately its little voice would seem to have
reached so far, and to be echoing in his heart. But for these poor
rogues, the bank-robbers,--who, after all, are about as honest as nine
people in ten, except that they disregard certain formalities, and
prefer to transact business at midnight rather than 'Change-hours,--and
for these murderers, as you phrase it, who are often excusable in the
motives of their deed, and deserve to be ranked among public
benefactors, if we consider only its result,--for unfortunate
individuals like these, I really cannot applaud the enlistment of an
immaterial and miraculous power in the universal world-hunt at their
heels!"

"You can't, hey?" cried the old gentleman, with a hard look.

"Positively, no!" answered Clifford. "It puts them too miserably at
disadvantage. For example, sir, in a dark, low, cross-beamed, panelled
room of an old house, let us suppose a dead man, sitting in an
arm-chair, with a blood-stain on his shirt-bosom,--and let us add to
our hypothesis another man, issuing from the house, which he feels to
be over-filled with the dead man's presence,--and let us lastly imagine
him fleeing, Heaven knows whither, at the speed of a hurricane, by
railroad! Now, sir, if the fugitive alight in some distant town, and
find all the people babbling about that self-same dead man, whom he has
fled so far to avoid the sight and thought of, will you not allow that
his natural rights have been infringed? He has been