HOOPER'S MURDER. 199 



There is one stanza in this poem in which 

 he writes of cold-blooded murder in such a 

 rollicking style that unless, as it is charity to 

 hope, he did not know what the circumstances 

 Avere, our sympathy for the fate which befell 

 him afterwards, might be entirely withdrawn, 

 and men might say that his own request to 

 *Mie without a rope" was denied him as a 

 punishment for the utterance : 



"But, oh Thaddeus Possett, why 

 Should thy poor soul elope, 

 And why should Titus Hooper die. 

 Ah, die — without a rope ! " 



Mr. Clayton says that Hooper ^* was mur- 

 dered by the Tories under John Van de Roder, 

 a neighbor, who entered his home in the night, 

 and after shooting him through the head com- 

 pelled his wife to hold a candle while they 

 thrust nineteen bayonets into him." 



What had Hooper done? Perhaps some- 

 body can tell us something that may be said 

 in extenuation of the brutal conduct of Van 

 de Roder, and of the inhuman rhyme of 

 Andr6. The closing lines are almost prophetic 

 of retribution : 



