Jan. 24.
Save for the merciful provision of American law which recognizes varying degrees in the heinousness of murder, Henry B. Furbush would today be resting under sentence of death. Indeed under other codes there would be no doubt of it whatever, and Furbush has to thank the fact of his citizenship of the United States that he is not at present looking forward to a rapidly approaching and ignominious end. To those who think deeply on such matters it would appear that Fur-bush is not alone guilty, that he was but the instrament which has brought into the full glare publicity a state of affairs of which the community as a whole is as culpable as he is of his immediate act, and if the whole of the foreign population of Shanghai can be brought to realize the hideous condition of things upon which this paper has dilated for some four years, Forbush will not have been branded a felon entirely for naught and his wife and child will not have suffered through the years to come entirely unavailingly. As it is, magistrates in various Courts, newspapers and many moral workers have the melancholy privilege of being able to tell Shanghai at large "we told you so,"'
The clements of this tragedy are of the simplest kind. They deal with a comparatively young man, leaving his ship for a night's jollification, carry pistol, taking more dri he should—drinks whose places of sale do not r them of the most sinister suspicions—going to wu locality of unenviable repute, entering into an altercation, and finally drawing and firing his weapon at a person with whom he had in fact no quarrel. It is not to be believed for one monient that this man went out from his ship bent on murder or even strife with anyone, or that he at any time, save in so far as he was under the influence of drink to such an extent as might modify his processes of thought, desired the death of anyone. He was out to enjoy himself with the poor facilities for enjoyment that Shanghai offers to such casual visitors. Speculation on such matters does
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.