AMERICAN ITEMS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2338, 2 April 1892, Page 4

AMERICAN ITEMS.

The American correspondent of the Otago Daily Times writes :—The State of Tennessee has lately gained an unenviable notoriety in the annals of crime. One must go to the pages of the older dramatists to find anything approaching in unadulterated horror the tragedies which have within a few weeks been perpetrated in its borders. In the autumn of last year a young girl, handsome, highly educated, 20 years of age, and a belle in the society of county Fentress, retired to live in the country. Rumors spread, charges. first uttered in a whisper, grew plainer and more explicit until the fact that Mary Beatty, the girl in question, was about to become a mother could not be denied. Shortly after the birth of the. child, Mary's father, an ex-State representative and one of the wealthiest men in the county, was arrested at the instigation of his own daughter—the unhappy mother—who charged her father with being the author ot the child's existence. The horror and excitement we re terrible, and the

sherriffs, fearful of the mob, changed the prisoner's location. Eventually Beatty was released under a heavy bond. No sooner he was free than he disappeared, and has not returned. Meanwhile Mary was living with some relatives named Harris. In the last week in December, accompanied by the Harrises, she came to testify against her own father before the grand jury. The sons of Beatty were also there. They had sided with their father. Upon leaving town to proceed home the Harris family were followed upon horseback by the two brothers of Mary and a man named Bowden. Marion Beatty rode up to the waggon and asked his sister "to stop this nonsense and return home." The girl replied she " would die rather; " whereupon the young brute, uttering a fearful string of dirty oaths, raised his riding whip and struck the poor girl a cruel blow upon the face, laying open the flesh and felling her senseless. Young Harris then came forward, drew his revolver, and shot the three men dead. Such is an outline of a series of events matching anything of which drama or novel tells. Perhaps not the least remarkable part of the tragedy is that, beyond stating a reward has been offered for Harris' apprehension, no notice, to my knowledge, has appeared in the papers relative to the case since the triple murder was enacted. Again in the last week of January a young society girl—Alice Mitchell by name —drove down the street of Memphis, in this State, in company with another society lady, and pulling up by the side walk, where a Miss Freda Ward was standing, she sprang out of the buggy, grasped Miss Ward by the neck, drew a bright razor from the folds of her dress, and with it cut the throat of her victim. The miserable creature jumped into the buggy and drove away. Miss Ward died a few minutes afterwards. Her murderess is in gaol, and has stated, as the papers say, her reason for murdering the girl was that the latter had refused to marry her ! It is necessary to refei to some of the monstrous myths I of Grecian fable and mythology before we pronounce that such passions as this avowal discloses are unknown in the history of the race. At Chattanooga, in the same State, on the 30th ult., there were 141 cases for divorce to come before the judge. In three hours he had granted 32, refused 63, and adjourned the remainder to next day. Our Readers must, however, exercise their own judgment as to whether divorce properly comes under the head of tragedy or its opposite.