"HAPPY DESPATCH IN AMERICA.

Evening Star, Issue 4287, 22 November 1876, Page 1

"HAPPY DESPATCH IN AMERICA.

±ne operation known as f'she happy o , 'despatch" has generally been considered'" a custom peculiar to the Far East, but it would appear from a rather terrible' story told by the American papers tnat' the practice is regarded with Some ''••'* degree of favor in at least one of the United States. A forfcntett ago a boy named Klotr murdered the i: daughter of his employer, a farmer in Harford county, Maryland. The young ruffian admitted his guHVand stated that he committed the crime "out of puie wickedness." The. neighborhood was, of course, profoundly apated, and without waiting for the arof the representative of the";' law, the people supplied them* selves with a rope, and led the lad into a wood wi£h the intention of lynching him without further delay. He was promptly suspended by the neck from the limb of a tree ; but some persons in the crowd hadscruples about thus disposing of ithe T criminal, and he was cut down. Klotz appeared to regret the indisposition of his humane friends. He asked for a gun, that he might himself; but no such weapon being'at hand, it was suggested to him that he might just as well hang himself. He agreed to do this, and climbing the tree from which he had just .been cutdown, he passed his' into the ! nooso. He was not in the feast flustered. He asked if the rope was properly adjusted, and on being informed that it seemed all right he bade ' the mob good bye and threw himself off This, as far as the West is concerned, is a decided innovation, and an innovation of a kind which, it is to be hoped, will not meet with a large * amount of popular approval. It would be unfortunate if the barbarities which t the Japanese are discarding were to be taken up and perpetuated by a people which boasts of its position in the van of civilisation. Even the " Heathen Chinee,'* whose low morality is so intolerable to the swashbucklers oi the Pacific slope, would shudder it suoh a scene as that ejaiaoted in the State of Maryland.