l88 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. , 



but was captured. Two days before, he had wantonly insulted a helpless cripple, 

 and the man he afterward took swift vengeance upon with an assassin bullet ha4, 

 knocked him down. Such was the Baldwin case. The trial was long and exciting: 

 the community was fearfully wrought up. Men said this spiteful, bad-hearted- 

 villain had caused grief enough in his time, and now he should satisfy the law. But 

 they were mistaken; Baldwin was insane when he did the deed — they had not 

 thought of that. By the arguments of counsel it was shown that at half-past ten in 

 the morning on the day of the murder, Baldwin became insane, and remained so 

 for eleven hours and a half exactly. This just covered the case comfortably, and 

 he was acquitted. Thus, if an unthinking and excited community had been 

 listened to instead of the arguments of counsel, a poor crazy creature would have . 

 been held to a fearful responsibility for a mere freak of madness. Baldwin went 

 clear, and although his relatives and friends were naturally incensed against thb 

 community for their injurious suspicions and remarks, they said let it go for this 

 time, and did not prosecute. The Baldwins were very wealthy. This same Bald- 

 win had momentary fits of insanity twice afterward, and on both occasions killed 

 people he had grudges against. And on both these occasions the circumstances of 

 the killing were so aggravated, and the murders so seemingly heartless and 

 treacherous, that if Baldwin had not been insane he would have been hanged 

 without the shadow of a doubt. As it was, it required all his political and family 

 influence to get him cleaf- in one of the cases, and cost him not less than 10,000 

 dollars to get clear in the other. One of these men he had notoiriously been 

 threatening to kill for twelve years. The poor creature happened, by the merest 

 piece of ill fortune, to come along a dark alley at the very moment that Baldwin's 

 insanity came upon him, and so he was shot in the back with a gun loaded with 

 slugs. , - 



Take the case of Lynch Hackett, of Pennsylvania. ' Twice, in public, he attacked 

 a German butcher by the name of Bemis Feldner, with a cane, and both times 

 Feldner whipped him with his fists. Hackett was a vain, wealthy, violent gentle- 

 man, who held his blood and family in high esteem, and believed that a reverent 

 respect was due to his great riches. He brooded over the shame of his chastise- 

 ment for two weeks, and then, in a momentary fit of insanity, armed himself to the 



