Daniel IV. Voorhees as Lawyer and Orator. although it occurred early in the address, it was said her acquittal was assured: — "He had carried her to the highest pinnacle of happiness and hope. She stood upon the summit of joyous expectations, and all around her was sunshine and gladness. Well might she exclaim to my learned and eminent brother, as she paced her prison floor: 'Oh! Mr. Bradley, you should have seen me then; I was so happy! ' Yes, though poor and humble, yet she loved and was beloved, and it was enough; she was content. For in that hour, when a virtuous woman feels for the first time that she possesses the object of her affection, there comes to her a season of bliss which brightens all the earth before her. The mother watching her sleeping babe has an exclusive joy beyond the comprehension of all hearts but her own. The wife who is graced by her husband's love is more beauti fully arrayed than lilies, and envies not the diamonds of queens. But to the young virgin heart, more than all, when the kind ling inspiration of its first sacred love is accompanied by a knowledge that for it in return there burns a holy flame, there comes an ecstacy of the soul, a rapturous exalta tion, more divine than ever again to be tasted this side of the bright waters and perennial fountains of Paradise. The stars grow brighter, the earth more beautiful, the world for her is filled with a delicious melody. This, peculiarly, is woman's sphere of happiness. According to the evidence, she was up to that time the merriest and most joyous of her circle. The world, the glad earth, the opening day, the bending sky, and the kind faces of friends were all beautiful to her, and she enjoyed the few years of her unclouded happiness. But now the laugh was gone, no merriment kindled in her eyes; the future to her was dead; she lived in the past, and it was the
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charnel-house of all her hopes, and over it bent the mourning cypress." On the morning of Oct. 17, 1870, Harry Crawford Black killed Col. W. W. McKaig in the principal thoroughfare of Cumber land, Maryland. His trial for this offense began April 11, 1871, at Frederick; and for the prosecution appeared the AttorneyGeneral and two able lawyers as assistants. In the defense assisting Mr. Voorhees was A. K. Syster of Hagerstown, Fred J. Nilson of Frederick, Lloyd Lowndes and William M. Price of Cumberland. Mr. Voorhees made the principal speech for the defense, consuming three hours and a half in its delivery. The accused was acquitted, the jury being out a little over one hour. McKaig had seduced young Black's sister, and then abandoned her. The defense was self-defense, for McKaig had threatened Black's life. Black's character, up to the day of the shooting of McKaig, had been excellent, and this gave Mr. Voorhees a fine opportunity to call attention to his con duct previous to that date, and ask if such a person could voluntarily be guilty of such a crime as murder. " Can the mark of Cain rest upon the brow of such a one? Can the ineffaceable hand of bloody guilt be there? Such an assertion is a perver sion of all laws of human nature. The tree shall be known by its fruits; the thorn and the thistle do not bear delicious figs, and a life of innocence and peace does not bloom and ripen of a sudden into a harvest of atrocious crime." The picture of the wronged and desolate home (the young girl committed suicide) is a masterful sketch; and the allusion to the daughter of Jacob, seduced by a prince of one of the neighbor ing tribes, and to the conduct of Simeon and Levi in taking vengeance on the entire tribe, is most artfully put. His denuncia tion of the seducer was merciless: "And I
