A SENSATIONAL EXECUTION.

Evening Star, Issue 4295, 1 December 1876, Page 4

A SENSATIONAL EXECUTION.

That wide district of America known to French geographers as le Farwest has lately witnessed an imposing exercise of public justice. The sufferer from Lynch law was a person of the name of Higgles, whose punishment vas as striking and severe as his crime—the murder of a child—was nefarious. Higgles, according to the ‘ Figaro,’ had been condemned by a jury of his countrymen, and was being led by them and any other citizens who happened to have a spare half-hour to the usual place of execution. On the road the public-spirited jury chanced to encounter some amateurs of another sort of spectacle, who were engaged in the business of starting a balloon. The happy thought of combining aeronautic science with the avenging of public morality at once occurred to some fertile mind, and Higgles was made fast by a noose round his neck to the car of the balloon. The word “Let go” was then given, and Higgles ascended into the firmament, his convulsive struggles testifying to the disagreeable nature of his position. After the death of Higgles, tube really imposing part of this form of execution began. The balloon, urged by contrary winds, was unable to descend to earth, and the natives of le Farwest were enabled to cultivate their moral faculties by studying through telescopes the appalling fate that overtook the carcase of Higgles. The birds of the air gathered together, pursued the balloon, and feasted on the frame of the malefactor.